


Comin' In On a Wing and a Prayer

by backtopluto



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Babe is very Irish, Canon-Typical Violence, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Alternating, Period-Typical Homophobia, Slow Burn, and also a fighter pilot, eugene is a volunteer doctor, you see where it's going
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23554123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backtopluto/pseuds/backtopluto
Summary: There was a fear that crawled it's way into his throat, and it came over him like a drowning man. Everyday Eugene watched the planes land, and everyday he was scared one of them wasn't gonna be Babe's.
Relationships: Babe Heffron/Eugene Roe, Bill Guarnere & Babe Heffron
Comments: 36
Kudos: 94





	1. Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the actor's portrayal, no disrespect meant towards the real men!
> 
> Title from Comin' In On a Wing and Prayer by Four Vagabonds

_Years and years later Eugene would hear the words from a historian, who was wide-eyed and desperate to know what it had been like, what it had really been like. He clung to every word he said, picked them apart like a puzzle._

_Twenty-six hundred Eighth Air Force men died, the man said. More than all the US Marines lost in the entire war._

_Eugene knew this. But it wasn't even the half of it._

_Wasn’t even the beginning of it._

**November 1943**

**The South of England**

For Eugene, it’s difficult to pinpoint when exactly everything starts. If he was in the mood to be existential, he could go back to Sarajevo thirty years ago, or to Poland in 1939, or even to Pearl Harbor. He could say it began when he left university with the plan to find a job in a hospital, took a left turn to a red cross station and instead ended up at some craggy RAF base buried in the folds of the English countryside. 

But really, he knows precisely when it begins. It began on a day that had been quiet, with no new patients and an infirmary with rows and rows of empty beds. A day in late November when the clouds were thick and white, and hung low and heavy with the promise of snow. The land below was all hills that looked like ocean waves, the grass browned and layered under frost. Ancient stone walls crisscrossed the countryside, interrupted only by the occasional skeletal tree. 

Eugene stood outside the infirmary, smoking a rare and treasured cigarette. The tobacco was harsh in his lungs, but the sort one could lean into. He watched a brown cow on the horizon chew lazily on a clump of dried grass, it’s tail swishing lazily. Eugene nearly envied the creature, it’s obliviousness and lack of responsibility. He exhales a cloud, watches it tangle in the icy air and dissipate. The cow’s ears flicked as it moved it’s head towards the east. Eugene frowns, but a moment later he hears it too- the low buzz of engines. Eugene tenses, there’s no way to know if the aircraft are German, British, or American by the sound of their engines alone. If there is, Eugene is oblivious to it. He tilts his head back and the clouds are so low that the fleet is nearly on top of him before he’s able to decipher the familiar wing patterns of the B-17s and P-51s. Hundreds of metallic birds, knifing open the sky and clouds. They fill the air with the roar of their engines until it’s all Eugene can hear and he’s just about drowning in it, until it’s all there is. He turns, the wind pushing his hair in his face as droves and droves of planes cut open the sky. 

He throws down his cigarette with a sigh. He was hoping they’d be British, but he knows to count his blessings when they come. 

The bombers continue north towards their base a few miles away, whilst the fighters land at the airstrip across from the infirmary, which functioned more like a field hospital. Eugene takes a moment to watch, fascinated by the way the planes practically float to the ground, suspended for a moment in the air before the wheels kiss the ground and the entire plane jolts with the impact, the pilot bouncing in his seat. The ground crews rush to inspect the plane and help pull the pilot out, and it’s only when they do that Eugene curses- the man’s leg is almost entirely off. 

When he makes it back into the infirmary, it’s madness. Nurses and doctors are running around, throwing together a cocktail of bandages and morphine and ushering in the pilots already coming in on gurneys, their faces tight with pain. There’s a large clump of people gathered around one in particular and he shoves his way through to the pilot with most of his leg gone. 

Eugene can’t help the intake of breath. It isn’t pretty, and he was used to burns and bullet holes, shrapnel in the legs and shoulders, pneumonia and lungs ruined by faulty respirators, not limbs that were hanging on by a few tenuous strands of tendon. There’s quite possibly more blood than he’s ever seen in his life, it covers the gurney and his uniform and everyone so much as near him. Amazingly the pilot is still awake, eyes lost and unfocused, caught in a dense fog of shock. The pilot is muttering something that sounds horribly like, “I gotta get up.” 

A nurse knocks Eugene’s shoulder and he’s jolted back to himself like a puppet whose strings had been yanked tight. Eugene shakes his head and calls for anesthetic, for an operating room to be prepared. They wheel the man in just as the lights are flickering on and Eugene is dunking the scalpel into antiseptic, muttering a prayer. 

“Can it be reattached?” A nurse asks, her face pale as the man passes out. Other nurses are already cutting away his pants, yanking off his respirator, lifevest, parachute and jacket. 

“How did this even happen?” Eugene mutters instead of replying. Pilots didn’t just lose limbs and still fly the plane all the way back. There're a lot of bad jobs in the world, but cutting off a man’s leg had to be one of the worst he thinks, wiping down the blade of the bone saw. 

Eugene’s mind settles, the scent of antiseptic strong enough to drown out that of blood and the commotion and the frantic tangle of languages. The bright fluorescence and his own pounding heart melt into a single pin prick, a needle knife edge of focus and Eugene shifts into another part of himself and nothing else matters but this. 

His grandmother said God put everyone on this planet for a reason, and as Eugene lowers the saw, he wonders if he’s the luckiest or unluckiest man to ever walk the earth. 

Babe had a gift. That was what everyone said. It was what Captain Winters said when Babe climbed out of his cockpit at the end of each mission, his plane dotted with bullet holes and the glass cracked and splintered like a spiderweb. It was what Liebgott said when Babe took out four _Messershcmdits_ in half an hour. It was what Army command told him, and the British pilots who flew with him, and the bomber crews who watched with stunned eyes at the way he flew, like he’d been born inside a plane. 

But as the runway made its appearance in the distance, his plane coughing on the last dregs of fuel still in the belly of her engine, it didn’t feel much like a gift. 

His grip was knuckle tight on the controls and sweat poured down his face and slipped over his goggles, the air that came through his respirator was thin and tasted of gas. There was a cold dread clawing at his throat that had been working it’s way up from his gut for the better part of an hour. He dipped below the low clouds, weighed down with the promise of coming snow. Beneath him the small English town is spread out like a patchwork quilt. The fields beyond were crisscrossed with stone walls and trees. Pale faces gazed up at him from the town, the breaths leaving their throats as the plane hacked open the clouds at a speed entirely too fast. 

The sprawling runways and fields of the RAF base approached and Babe watched the plane a ways in front of him- Bill’s plane, which was a mess of bullet holes and part of the canopy had shattered completely. The left side of the plane was crumpled like a sheet of aluminium, a trail of coughing grey smoke followed in its wake. 

Babe’s grip further tightened as Bill descended in front of him, the plane jolting horribly when he all but crashed into the runway, skidding a lurching halt at the end of the runway. For everything Bill was- brash, reckless, and protective, he’d never been a messy flyer. There was no way to make it as a pilot otherwise. The awful landing had Babe sweating, fear and worry lancing up his shoulders like cold water.

Babe circled above for a few minutes, waiting for his chance to land. As soon as he saw Luz’s plane come to a halt he dove in, his stomach dropping away from him in a rush. The grey pavement filled his vision entirely. It was seconds before the plane’s outstretched wheels kissed the runway, reaching out like a child for their mother, that Babe realized he was going much, much too fast. 

His mind spun, the intense dogfight had left him disoriented and pale to the point that now he’d gone and forgotten the basics. The things which normally came as naturally as breathing. His heart stuttered as he yanked up on the controls, hoping to pull out and circle around again and come in at a slower speed. Unfortunately, he did this just as the wheels hit the ground and the plane wobbled horribly, the nose aimed towards the ground before settling and Babe yanked the controls again, pointing them straight down the runway instead of left into the fields and parked Jeeps. Wide-eyed faces watched him as he sped down the concrete, eating up too much of the runway much too fast. 

“Shit.” Babe wrenched the controls as close to his body as possible, his muscles shaking with the effort and his back arching off the chair and pushing at the safety belts as the plane blessedly slowed and came to a halt, only feet from a parked Spitfire. 

Babe collapsed into his seat, his body turning to boneless jell-o. For a moment all he could do was blink at the control panel, the plane still humming around him. His chest heaved as he worked to get in enough oxygen and he tore off the respirator, inhaling great lungfuls of real air. It was like surfacing from the bottom of the sea. 

His ground crew was already bustling around the plane, looking for damage on their baby. Once the engine was off and the respirator disconnected, the plane no longer became the pilot’s, instead the ground crew took over. Babe could see them glaring at him as they thumbed the bullet holes. 

Babe took one more deep breath before unbuckling the safety belt and tearing off his goggles and helmet. His red hair was matted with enough sweat that it looked like he’d dunked his head under water. Babe grips at the glass of the cockpit and wrenches it open, a cold wind ruffling through. 

The plane behind him lands with a low roar as Babe stands on legs that feel more like uncooked noodles than bone and muscle, when Julian pushes him back down with a firm grip.

“What the fuck?” Babe hisses, his hands still shaking with adrenaline, the endorphins moving through him like a drug. It kept him alive, but Babe knew that in half an hour he’d be too tired to stand. Too tired to argue with Julian. 

Babe was the youngest pilot in the squadron, but somehow Julian never failed to make him feel old. He tries to stand again and Julian pushes him back. 

“Jesus Christ let me go!” Babe yells, his voice high and tight. “I gotta see if he’s okay!” 

Julian purses his lips. There’s a canteen of water in his hands. The rest of the ground crew watches as he whispers, “You don’t wanna see it, Babe.” 

“To Hell with that, he’s my best mate. I gotta go.” This time when Babe climbs out Julian doesn't try to stop him, only watches him go with a twisted expression, the plane still running and the first flakes of snow just beginning to fall. 

Babe sits outside the operating room for nearly three hours. He misses the debriefing and report, which he knows he’ll be in trouble for later. At least Major Winters was pretty lenient. 

Babe chews his fingernails down to the skin, his leg bouncing with nervous energy. When he can’t chew his nails anymore he paces up and down the hallway, like an animal in a cage. At some point a nurse comes by and convinces him to take off his gear, which he hadn’t even realized was still on. She brings him water. Joe Toye and George Luz stop by, their faces paleing by what the nurse has to tell them and the relative silence coming from the operating room. At some point Captain Nixon arrives, but is unable to stay for long. The three of them watch the sunset through the windows, masked by a wall of clouds and a ferocious snow storm. Babe is thankful to not be in the sky. 

Babe chews his lip, finally sitting down. If he stops moving though, his mind wanders back to a few hours earlier over the english channel. He was another plane in the combined fleet of bombers and escort fighters that filled the sky like starlings. They were on their way back from a run over northern France. There was a ball of warmth in his stomach, a comfortableness in the endless ocean and the hundreds of men around him. All the targets had been hit, the fighters hadn’t had to do much apart from look pretty and get out of the bombers' way. It was when the beaches of France slipped from view and the heavy clouds of fog settled over the channel that things went to hell and a handbasket. 

A dozen Bf-109s had descended from the sky like hawks, the clouds wicking off their wings as the sky was filled with the pop of gunfire from every direction. Babe’s heart climbed into his throat, and that heady thrill that came with combat found him and set his blood on fire. 

Often, it was easy to forget that there were men in those planes. That there were men all around him, hurtling in metal tubes through the sky. It was normally so easy to forget, to disconnect, but for a moment, when the messerschmidt dropped from the sky in front of him, and fired point blank Babe didn’t forget for a single moment that Bill was right there. 

He didn’t forget this as he rolled out of the way, the belly of the plane towards the horizon as Babe’s vision swam in and out of focus at the sudden movement. The dark water of the ocean was spread out beneath him like an endless roll of fabric, waves crashing against one another in a spray of salt. From the corner of his eye he saw a massive B-17 crash into the sea, the plane thrown apart on impact as Babe’s own plane rattled with the force of the messerschmidt screaming past. 

Babe pulled out of the roll and pushed forward on the throttle. The simplest rule of dogfighting was this; you didn’t want the enemy behind you or on top of you which meant you had to have altitude on your side. 

Glancing over his shoulder he saw that the left side of Bill’s cockpit had been crushed like a tin can from where the wing of the messer had skimmed its side, Babe’s jaw nearly dropped- that was the kind of shit you pulled with bombers, not the tiny P-51s. The move had been costly, the german plane had gone crashing into the sea. By some miracle, Bill was still flying the plane. 

There was a burst of enemy fire from behind him and Babe cursed, climbing at a near 90-degree angle into the clouds. His stomach fell away, the ocean fell away and became sky and clouds. Blackness edged at his vision and he took measured breaths to clear them. To his relief, the German fell for it. Babe knew the P-51 could climb higher and faster than the clunky Bf-109, but one look at his fuel gauge and his stomach plummeted while his plane soared, the skin of the water growing smaller and smaller. He only had one chance to do this. He sent a prayer to God, could practically feel Him holding him in his hands at this altitude. Babe was close enough to the sun he thought he could kiss it. 

At the top of the climb Babe’s mind settled as he grinned, and he cut the engine. 

The word fell silent, and all he could hear was his own rattling breath and the German behind him. 

Babe fell, swapped the view of the sky for the sea and watched as the German pilot realized what had happened, the fear clouding his face before his engine cut as well and didn’t start again. Babe fired, and the german plane spun like a corkscrew towards the open maw of the sea. 

The door to the operating room cracked open, yanking him from his memories. The three exhausted pilots all stood as an enervated doctor exited, his white coat stained with blood and heavy bags hung under his eyes. Babe swallowed. 

The doctor looks at all of them at the same moment that Babe asks, “Is he okay?” 

“What happened?” Joe demands. 

While George, for all his optimism asks, “Is he still kicking?” 

The doctor looks at them in turn, a furrow between his brows as his gaze lingers on Babe. 

“He’s alive.” The doctor announces and the tension in Babe’s shoulders unwinds. “But he’s hurt real bad, won’t see another day of combat.” 

“How hurt?” Joe’s eyes narrow. 

The doctor runs a hand through his hair. “We had to amputate his leg.” 

“Jesus!” Babe exclaims. “His _leg_?”

Neither George nor Joe seem fazed, they’d seen Bill being wheeled in, the state he was in. The news was merely confirming their fears. The joking smile at the corner of George’s lips falter, then falls apart all together. 

The doctor nods solemnly, and he seems genuinely sorry. “He won’t fly again. He’s going home.” 

_Home_ . Philadelphia. Babe sits down beside the pile of his gear and runs a hand over his face. He sees brown streets and American flags, Bill as a kid staring up at the blue sky as they smoked on the fire escape, the smell of Geno’s carrying all the way to Front Street. Home was Ma's cooking and Babe making a face at his first bite of Bill’s sub-par rigatoni. It was dirty streets and dirtier kids and the steeple of Independence Hall over it all. The words _he won’t fly again_ circling in his head.

George and Joe pat his back and thank the doctor before quietly turning away. Their footsteps are loud in the hall.

Babe rubs his eyes, he isn’t crying but he feels like he should be. All he can see is him and Bill as kids, running through the city with stolen candy and arguing over whether rigatoni or shepherd’s pie was better. He remembers Bill laughing and dragging a heartbroken Babe home from the bar, sees him in his pilot’s uniform and the first time he gets in a plane, sees the messerschmidt coming from the clouds and the cold dread that settles in his stomach like a rock. 

A hand rubs up and down his back and when he looks up the doctor is sitting beside him, not saying anything but staring at the floor with that hundred-yard stare like he’s seeing but not really looking. But Babe looks at him. 

The doctor glances up. His eyes are a deep grey, and there’s a patch of stubble along his jaw. He’s young, right around Babe’s age. 

“He’s going home. He’s safe now.” 

Jesus, when had safety become a luxury? He leans into the doctor, this stranger, who for a brief moment just holds him. He holds him because he knows. He feels this everyday damn day and it’s supposed to just be part of the job. 

When the darkness outside settles despite the storm and the blackout curtains are pulled down tight over the windows, Babe moves away and mutters, “Sorry about all that.” 

The doctor waves him off. “Don’t worry.” 

“Can I come back and see him?” 

“Sure.” He says, standing up. “He’ll be someplace else but I can’t tell you where yet.” 

Babe stands as well. “Thank you. For saving him.” 

He only smiles, sad and small before walking down the hallway with his bloody sleeves and tired eyes and Babe looks towards the ceiling towards the clouds and sky and where heaven should be. He felt like a child whose comfort object had been ripped away. He blinks, pretends the fluorescent lights are the sun. 

It’s only then that Babe realizes he never got his name. 

Eugene washes off his hands in the basin, under all the blood his skin is cracked and red, rubbed raw by the potent soup. The blackout curtains are pulled back, flooding the ward with natural light. Outside the snow held tight to the land, and the sky was an oyster-grey that hid the sun. The floor of the hospital seemed intent on dragging Eugene down into it, and he wanted to let it do so, so long as it let him sleep. 

When he looks up from the pink water circling the drain, Renée is glaring at him with enough venom that Eugene’s stomach twists unpleasantly. He shakes off his hands (there’s no towels, those are all being used as spare bandages) and turns towards her. “Renée?”

“When was your shift supposed to end?” She snaps. 

Eugene wipes his hands on his white lab coat and mumbles, “Two hours ago.” 

“Then why are you still here?”

“Well Spina isn’t here yet.” He tries. Spina was the other head doctor, he tended to work opposite shifts of Eugene. 

“No, he got here two hours ago. He’s in the operating room.” 

Eugene hisses. How could he not have known? “On _who_?” 

She shrugs. “Some ground crew kid playing with a gun.” 

“Jesus.” He runs a hand through his hair and moves towards the surgical ward when Renée pushes him back, her expression stern and not unlike his french grandma. 

“You are going to go back to your room and sleep. You look like a walking ghost.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“ _Non_ .” She pushes him towards the door. “If I see you back in this ward before seven hours have past I will personally sedate you. Now _go_.” 

Eugene stumbles out into the hallway and glares at the door Renée slams behind him. He mumbles some choice words in French when a dry laugh makes him look up. 

“She kicked you out too?” 

He finds the pilot from yesterday (the one with both his legs), leaning against the wall. He’s wearing his uniform with the A-10 jacket, but he isn’t logged down by the parachute and lifevest, and his red hair shines cleanly where it’s no longer clumped together with sweat and grime. Eugene takes a moment to look at him without the panic of the surgery hanging over them both. The pilot is tall and gangly, with a sloping nose and warm eyes, his smile crooked and big enough that it splits his narrow face in two. Eugene doesn't want to stop looking. 

He swallows, gathering himself. “What are you doing here?” 

The pilot leans off the wall. “I wanted to go see Bill but the nurse said they ain’t allowing visitors yet. I told ‘em you said I could come, but I didn’t know your name so they didn’t believe me.” 

Eugene looks back at the shut door. Bill was in a different ward then the one he’d just exited, and if he was lucky he wouldn’t run into Renée at all. He was tired enough that he considered telling the pilot to just return to the base, Eugene was fighting to keep his eyes open at all. The exhaustion was settled deep into his bones and stretched him thin. He wore it like a heavy coat.

Still, he welcomed the distraction the pilot was giving him, the excuse not to sleep. He knew if he returned to his room, the blackout curtains pulled down so the room was dark as night, that his mind would throw up image after image of all the blood under his nails and the way the men screamed in his arms. The way they died no matter what he did. 

Eugene cocks his head down the hall as he fishes out a cigarette. “He probably ain’t awake yet, but I’ll take you to him.” 

“Gee, really? You’re a lifesaver.” The pilot falls in step with him as Eugene lights the cigarette, the nicotine flushing out the stress of the past sixteen hours. “I’m Babe, by the way.” 

Eugene frowns around this cigarette, tucking his lighter away. “Pardon?” 

“Right, sorry.” The pilot laughs. “Forget that can be off-putting. It’s an old nickname because I’m the youngest of six and two years younger than Bill so everyone calls me the baby of the family and one day that became Babe, and it stuck like molasses. My real name’s Edward, but it don’t sound right no more. Most of the guys don’t even know my real name, so you gotta keep it secret.” 

Eugene smiles to himself as they turn a corner. “I’ll guard it real safe, Edward.” 

“Hey! That doesn't mean you can go around calling me that. What’s your name anyways- and how’d you become a doctor? You can’t be much older than me.” 

“Eugene.” He says, exhaling a cloud of smoke and Babe just stares at him for a moment and Eugene doesn't know if he wants him to look away or keep looking. 

“Eugene.” Babe repeats like he’s testing out the word, seeing how it sits on his tongue and rolls out of his mouth. He grins just as they step into another ward, and Eugene shivers like someone’s placed a cold hand on his back. 

The ward was considerably emptier than the last with only a few nurses bustling around. It was hollowed and soundless as a cave, with the same void-like suction that leached off one’s energy. Eugene couldn’t explain it, there were flowers and it was bright, the sheets were clean and nobody was yelling, but Babe’s grin slid off his face when he spotted Bill near the end of the row, nearest the window. Babe stops walking like he’s reached the end of a length of rope and can’t go any further. His eyes go blank, and Eugene sees the pilot he saw yesterday- exhausted and half in shock, trying to wrap his head around it. 

Babe blinks, takes a slow step forward. Then a couple more. He steps across all the way across the ward to the bed. Bill is pale, nearly the same color as the sheets and the clouds outside. There’s an IV drip pumping fluid into his arm. He’s out cold, and Eugene doesn't expect for him to be waking up properly for another day or so. For a man who’d always seemed larger than life, Bill looks small amongst the sheets. He looks like a ghost, only a small sliver of the man Babe has grown up with. 

Babe takes off his cap, wringing it in his hands before turning to Eugene. “He’ll be okay, right?” 

Eugene nods. “Anyone who can fly a plane with their leg half-off isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.” 

Babe gives a small smile that makes Eugene’s gut twist as he turns back to his friend. “When will he wake up?” 

“Tomorrow or the next day I expect.” 

“Can I come back?” Babe asks with the earnestness of a child, like he’s afraid Eugene will actually say no. 

“Sure. He ain’t going nowhere.” 

“Will you let me know if he wakes up?” 

“Of course.” Eugene isn’t exactly sure how he is supposed to find Babe. He nods anyways.

The tensenes in Babe’s shoulders slackens and he nods, fitting the cap back over his orange hair. He smells of army soap and motor oil. 

“Thanks, Gene. I appreciate it.” He adds on his way out. 

Eugene watches him go, and forgets about the cigarette in his hands until it singes his fingers and he drops it on the linoleum. He stomps it out and glances at Bill, and wonders what he’s like, why Babe cares so much. Perhaps he’s spent too much time distancing himself, and he knows better than to get friendly with a fighter pilot because fighter pilots don’t come back. It’s suicide signing up for the AAF. It makes Bill look lucky. 

He kicks aside the cigarette before leaving and thinks, _you better wake up_. 

Babe comes back the next day at the same time, although this time he’s already beside Bill’s bed instead of waiting in the hallway. Eugene didn’t realize that he was hoping Babe would come back until he saw him, safe and sound whilst composing a letter. He frowned as he wrote, his eyebrows drawn as the pen stilled before he resumed his scribbling. Eugene steps across the room and checks Bill’s IV drip, Babe looks up when he does and the careful concentration melts into a jaunty grin. 

“Hey, Gene!” 

“Hello, Edward.” He says, flicking the IV bag as the drip resumes. 

Babe makes a face. “What did I say about calling me that?” 

“Frankly ‘Babe’ sounds just as ridiculous.” 

“I can’t win with ya.” Babe flops back in the chair, raising his arms as if in defeat. “I’ll never argue with a doctor again.” 

Eugene checks Bill’s pulse then scribbles something onto his clipboard. “Has he woken up yet?” Babe asks. 

Eugene shakes his head. “Not that I know of. One of the nurses might know.” 

Babe shakes his head and gestures towards the letter. “I thought I’d write his Ma, I figured the very official letter from Captain Winters might freak her out a bit. Maybe she’ll send him flowers. It might brighten up the place.” 

“There’s flowers here in the spring.” Eugene offers, although he doubted Bill would be here in the Spring, as soon as he was strong enough he’d be shipped back to Philadelphia. “It’s not as gloomy as the winter.” 

Babe looks out the window at the characterically grey English sky. The cow is still out there, although this time there’s a second one with her. 

“Say, Gene, where ya from?” Babe asks, already onto the next topic. He’s leaning forward in his chair, his feet angled towards Eugene. 

Eugene lifts back the blankets and shaked his head at the dirty bandages, he doesn't miss Babe’s sharp intake of breath. 

“Louisiana.” He pulls out a roll of bandages and begins unrolling the ones off the stump of Bill’s leg. “Small town, little ways from New Orleans.” 

“I’ve always wanted to go to New Orleans.” He says, voice tight with his eyes glued to what’s left of Bill’s leg and the ugly stitches and sutures keeping it together. “He’s gonna be alright, right?” 

Eugene doesn't look at Babe. Can’t bring himself too. His hands work methodically but gently, cutting away the bandages that stick before carefully rewrapping it with the clean ones. The bandages are the color of clouds, or frost. 

When it’s done he finally brings himself to look at Babe, who isn’t looking at Bill at all. He’s looking at Eugene like he’s seeing him for the first time. It steals the breath from his lungs and makes his head spin. 

It’s right about then that Eugene realizes he’s in trouble. 

He dosen’t rightly know what he’s doing, but Babe is back the next day after a lesson learning about basic controls and such, as well as new maneuvers. The pilots are given an hour of free time in the middle of the day when they aren’t flying missions over occupied territory, and Babe’s squadron is on two week rest. He doesn't know if he’s grateful for it, but the anxiety of going back into the air weighs heavily on him. 

When he enters the ward this time, the nurse doesn't try to stop him and he goes straight to the end where Bill is. His smile grows when Bill turns to look at him, he’s sitting up in the bed amongst a mountain of pillows and he doesn't look as small as he did the days before. 

When Babe reaches his bed he isn’t really sure what to say, so he just stands there, gaping like a fish until Bill gives a dry laugh and says, “Get over here, kid.” 

Bill ruffles his hair and Babe pretends not to grimace. He’s just glad to see him awake, the shock of nearly losing his best friend, brother, really- had him reeling. He thought he’d finally found his footing in life, a solid piece of ground to stand on and it had all been ripped away in a matter of minutes. Bill pushes him back to get a good look at him, like a grandmother who hasn’t seen her grandson in years. Bill narrows his eyes, but upon finding no scratch or bruise nods in approval and slaps Babe’s arm much too hard for someone in a hospital bed. 

“Look, Bill, I’m real sorry-” 

“For what?” Bill laughs. “Shooting down that Kraut? I just about shit myself when I saw you cut the engine like that at the top of the climb. Thought you were fucking suicidal before I realized what stunt you were pulling and then I nearly shit myself again.” 

Babe shakes his head. “I coulda gotten him, but I froze when he came out of nowhere like that, if I hadn’t done that you might not be in this bed right now.” 

“Look, Babe. You can’t go around thinking like that. You’ll get grey hairs.” 

“Like yours?” 

“Punk.” 

“Bastard.” 

Eugene clears his throat above them. Babe beams at the sight of him. It goes straight to Eugene’s dumb heart. 

“Hey Bill, ya met Gene, yet? He’s the one who stitched your leg together.” 

Bill looks up at Eugene then back towards Babe. “Yeah, I know ‘im. We’re well acquainted.” 

“He woke up yesterday after you left.” Eugene scribbles on that clipboard of his again. “He was real groggy.”

“How the Hell do you know each other?” Bill glances between the two, his voice sharp. 

Eugene wraps up a roll of bandages, clipping them into place. “Edward’s been stopping by everyday.” 

Bill turns to Babe, whose face has gone red and he starts laughing. “ _Edward_?”

“Ah, shaddup Bill.” 

“Should I go tell him your middle name too?” Bill howls, and turns to Eugene. “It’s Aodgha-” 

“Alright!” Babe says standing up. “Don’t even know why I hung around for you bastard, I gotta go catch Liebgott and see if he’s still got a game of gin rummy going.” 

Eugene and Bill watch him go, Eugene biting back a smile. 

“He ain’t ever played gin rummy in his life.” Bill says fondly. 

Eugene watches Babe until he’s completely disappeared, shaking his head. “Aodghan, huh?” 

Bill just laughs. 

  
  



	2. Forty Thousand Feet

They fall into a routine, and Eugene learns a lot about Babe, whether he wants to or not. Babe, like all pilots, is loud. His presence fills up every nook and corner, and like a magnet he pulls everyone in. The other patients and nurses lean into his voice, his infectious laughter and grin flood the ward, driving out the emptiness as steady as a beaming light. Or maybe it’s just Eugene. 

When Bill’s awake the effect is multiplied, their combined laughter and easy camaraderie as a result of a lifetime of building, is infectious. Eugene marvels at their innate ability to vastly shift the mood of the grim infirmary, until the nurses and patients are laughing under their breath. Babe fills Bill in on the news from the other pilots as well as on new maneuvers and tactics, and reads letters from home. Bill makes jokes about his missing leg, flirts with the nurses, and brings up old memories. 

But it’s when Babe’s gone that the silence settles back in like an unpleasant fog. Bill goes quiet, the patients and nurses stop laughing under their breath, and the bright presence that Babe leaves behind slowly melts away into the sober climate of a hospital. It only serves to leave everyone feeling worse than before, with only the unmistakable weight of the war for company.

What Eugene doesn't miss is that everytime Babe leaves, Bill quietly urges him to be careful. The smile drifts from Bill’s face, replaced by a steady hardness and something kinder boiling beneath. Yet, all Babe will say with a wink and a grin is, “Careful gets me killed.” 

It’ll ring in Eugene’s head for a long while, it’ll follow him to sleep that night and many thereafter. He will think of it when Babe isn’t there, and after the war. It’ll be in every beat of his heart because no matter how much he bends and shapes it, he can’t figure it out. He isn’t sure he really wants too. One night he’ll think of asking Babe, but doesn't. He never will. 

Late November bleeds into December, bringing greyer skies that want to snow but never do. Renée drags in some tinsel and covers the infirmary, and another nurse gets her hands on enough sugar to bake cookies. Babe comes in one of these days, and finds Bill passed out on his bed and snoring. The sight isn’t unusual, even two weeks removed from the accident he still needs a lot of sleep as his body rebuilds. Typically, Babe will just bug Eugene instead, who only pretends to mind. 

Today Babe takes his seat in the chair beside Bill’s bed, the one Eugene is begining to think of as Babe’s Chair. He looks at his friend for a long, expression set and sullen, before promptly falling asleep. 

The nurses stare. The patients stare. Eugene stares. His gut winds itself like a rope, and a tightness coils in his shoulders and throat. But there’s such a wrongness to seeing Babe Heffron sad that Eugene’s skin crawls like he’s covered in lice. The emptiness feels fuller, nearly suffocating. He can’t breathe. 

He takes a breath-o r five, before Eugene continues on, checking on the patients and fixing bandages. He returns to the amputee ward when Babe’s hour of freetime is nearly up, but he’s still passed out. 

Eugene checks the clock. Checks his watch. Looks at Babe. 

His arms are folded on the sheets beside Bill, his head resting atop. Strands of red hair fall on his face, and he looks even younger when he’s asleep. His freckles are brighter, and the stress he’s been hiding is wiped away. The twisting in Eugene’s gut sharpens, and for a moment all Eugene can do is stand there. He doesn't want to wake Babe up, wants to let him sleep until the creases under his eyes are gone. 

The sight of his watch pulls Eugene from it, and he shakes Babe lightly on the shoulder before stepping back. He expects Babe to wake with a start, but he only rubs his eyes and blinks.

“Did I fall asleep?” He mumbles and there’s marks on his face from where it rested on his arms. 

Eugene nods at the clock. “You gotta head back soon, Heffron.” 

Babe looks at it without really looking, before his eyes settle on Bill and his countenance crumbles like dry dirt. He rubs an exhausted hand over his face. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I just ain’t been sleeping real well.” 

“Why’s that?” 

“I dunno.” Babe leans back. “Can’t stop thinking, even though my body feels like it’s been run over by a truck.” His eyes drift back to Bill. Being a doctor had taught Eugene many things, and one of them was to read people like the labels on his K-rations. He can spot guilt like the color red. 

“You don’t gotta blame yourself.” Babe looks at him and he nearly forgets what he’s trying to say because he really doesn't know what to do with Babe’s entire, undivided attention zeroed in on him. “There ain’t a thing you could do.” 

“I froze, Gene.” Babe picks at the sleeves of his jacket. “He came outta nowhere, straight from the clouds and the fear went right here,” he gestures at his heart, “paralyzed me. If I’d been faster we both coulda gotten away. I was his wingman. It was my job to look out for him.”

“He’s still here, ain’t he?”

Babe’s eyes drift back to Bill. He deflates. “Yeah. Yeah I suppose so.” 

“Then you did everything you could and brought him back, to where he’s safe and going home.” 

“I just-” 

“You can’t keep dampening the mood of a  _ hospital _ , Heffron, which I gotta say is already pretty low. Does Bill blame you?” 

“Well, no.” He tears out one of the stitches on his cuffs and then just stares at it like he isn’t sure how it got out. 

“Then you shouldn’t either.” 

“Yeah.” Babe nods, looks out the window at the field with the cow. “Yeah, I guess so. It’s just, well gosh, we always had each other's back in Philly. My Ma said we were glued at the hip, couldn’t find one without the other. We ain’t ever been apart before. Not really sure what to do now.” 

Eugene frowns, he’d never had a friend like that, not really. He was outed to the town when he was sixteen, just before he left two years early for college. He hadn’t really been back since, and even before that he knew people had their suspicions, wondered why he kept so much to himself. He hated being labeled as the town’s queer, what it meant for his family. 

He pushes the thoughts aside, and instead he claps Babe on the back. “You keep flying, Heffron.”

Babe stands from the chair, his back popping. He offers Eugene a small smile at that, and he pats himself down to make sure he’s got everything. The heaviness that had been weighing on him doesn't seem so bad now. 

“You’re a real lifesaver, ya know that? Like fucking Gabriel or some shit.” 

“All in my job description.” 

Eugene follows Babe out the ward and halfway down the hall Babe looks down at his own watch, shouts an expletive before turning back towards Eugene and waving before hurrying down the hallway like he’s Jesse Owens. 

  
  


A handful of days later finds Bill asleep again when Babe makes his daily pilgrimage to the infirmary. This time his face doesn't collapse with sadness, and instead he turns right on over to Eugene, who was peacefully trying to fill out paperwork and pretend he doesn't know that Babe is right there. 

“Say, Gene,” he begins and Eugene looks at him sharply because no he does not in fact want to  _ say _ , but Babe just smiles wider. “You wanna go for a walk?” 

He gestures towards his papers. “I’m working.” 

“No you ain’t.” Babe insists. “You’re a volunteer, so you’re volunteering.” 

Eugene has never been a violent man, but he certainly considered punching him. 

“Besides, that’s all just paperwork. You can do that any time of day but you only got my presence for an hour.” 

“A cursed hour.” 

Babe laughs and pulls Eugene up by his arm. That’s really all the convincing Eugene needs apparently, because the next thing he knows he’s walking along the edge of the base with Babe at his side. The thin snow crunches under their boots, but most of it’s been packed down by the airmen on their PT runs and parades. The two of them are quiet and the clouds are a washed out white overhead. Eugene doesn't think he’s seen the sun since October, the same month that they saw 26% of their bomber forces killed in a single day. Eugene shivers and sticks his hands deeper into his pockets. He’d been good about keeping thoughts of home from his mind, but he’s never missed the searing Lousiania sun and the wet humidity more than he does now. 

Babe searches through his pockets and when he comes up empty he turns to Eugene. His hair is still damp from the shower, the scent of Army soap carrying on the wind. “Can I bum a smoke?” 

He’s already handing one over, which Babe takes gratefully as Eugene grabs his own. It’s growing dark despite only being mid afternoon, the sun low in the sky behind the clouds as the light bleeds out from the day. 

Babe kicks along a rock, or maybe it’s a piece of a plane. The scrap clatters off the end of his boot and over the snow. Eugene can nearly hear the bombardment of thoughts turning themselves around in Babe’s head. Eugene lets him swirl them around for a little while, content just to be with Babe at all all. He sheds the guise of doctor like a coat, grateful to be away from the spine-numbing stench of blood and antiseptic. Babe has kicked the scrap of metal a long ways before he finally stops and turns towards Eugene. 

“I’m flying again tomorrow.” He begins. “I’ve only been able to stop by so much because they’ve been giving us a break, but we all knew they were just biding their time, building up something real big.” He looks off towards the hangars where a few ground crews are tinkering on the fighters, while another one is being painted with a rather lewd image of a blonde. “And well, I probably shouldn’t say this but- we’re going to Germany.” 

That gets Eugene to stop. He stares at Babe, mouth agape before he remembers to press it shut. 

“ _ Germany _ ? But you’re a fighter.” As far as Eugene knew, not a single fighter in all the allied air forces had the fuel to make it to Germany and back. Raids over France and Italy were one thing, but Germany? He shook his head. 

“Yeah, apparently they think the P-51 can make the journey,” he wrings his hands together, “with some extra fuel tanks. That’s probably why they’ve slowly been easing us off the P-47 and Thunderbolt. Been thinking real long on this.” He exhales a cloud of smoke. “I don’t know why I’m telling ya all this, guess I just didn’t want you to be worried when I wasn’t there tomorrow.” 

Eugene’s stomach bottoms out, and his legs turn to mashed potatoes. He doesn't know what keeps him upright, if it’s Babe’s searching eyes or if that’s the thing turning him to mush. He imagines the fighters coming in as they do after every mission, canopies cracked and splintered, riddled with bullet holes and choking on the last of their fuel, imagines them all lining up on the runway as they land, pilot after pilot stepping out and none of them are Babe Heffron. 

“Gene?” Babe says, his smile wiped clean, his face drawn with concern. “You okay?” 

Eugene’s half-breathless when he finally speaks. “I’m alright, Heffron.” There’s no way to justify this reaction and he knows it. “You come see me as soon as you can. I don’t care if there ain’t a thing wrong with you. As soon as you step off that plane you come see me.” 

Babe nods, taking a drag on the cigarette. “Yeah, alright Gene. I’ll be right there.” 

They stand there, a few feet apart, every inch of it Eugene can feel with his whole being, and it’s like the goddam Grand Canyon. He wants to reach out, but he can’t. Knows better than to do it in the open. 

“Don’t tell Bill where we’re going.” Babe says after a pause. “He’ll freak out, then pretend like he’s not. The stress ain’t good for his leg.” 

“He’ll figure it out.” Eugene is grateful for the change in subject, and he steps forward to continue their walk. “Word gets around fast.” 

They walk until the image of the lewd blonde disappears, although they’re still well within sights of the base. A column of bomber airmen from the other base appear in the distance, dressed in their PT gear and running hard. Babe is looking at them funny as he finishes his cigarette. 

“Say, Gene.” He starts. “Why’d you become a doctor?” 

Eugene shrugs, in some ways he’d always felt that it was what he should do. Healing ran in the family, but none of them were doctors. At some point he’d started to look beyond the bayou, and then he set his mind on college and being a real doctor. A lot of the family laughed at him- a cajun doctor seemed about as funny as a fish flopping in a desert, but when Eugene got his mind set on something that was the end of the line. 

“It seemed right.” He says around the last of his cigarette. An icy wind tears over the land. “I wanted out of Bayou Chene, even though I love it. The Mississippi was threatening to drown us any day, and I figured I could do more as a real doctor than a traiteur.” 

“A traitor?” Babe frowns. 

Eugene snorts. “ _ Traiteur _ , not  _ traitor _ . My grandma was one. She’d lay her hands on people and take away their pain. It ain’t placebo, either, but you either got the gift or not and it never made an appearance in me.” He isn’t particularly bitter at the fact, if he had shown the signs of the gift he probably never would have left the bayou. 

“Gee.” Babe kicks at a rock now, his hands shoved deep into his own pockets. “Ain’t that something.” 

“Why’d you become a pilot?” Eugene is surprised by the question, and so is Babe. He looks at Eugene with a half-smile before he tilts his head towards the sky. 

Babe gestures at the clouds. “You’re telling me you never wanted to know what everything looks like from up there?” 

Eugene looks up, the clouds are still that awful off-white color and pressed close to the ground. He’s never been in an airplane, and he can’t say he has any real desire too, but he doesn't want to disappoint Babe so he says, “I suppose so.” 

“And fighter pilots are like the coolest. I mean, so are bombers, but in a fighter it’s all you. Every dogfight, mistake, every round fired is _ yours _ .” He looks forward again, and his voice goes quiet. “I always wanted to be a pilot, even as a kid. One of those aerial circuses came to Philly and I was hooked. I wanted to be a wingwalker, actually.” Eugene pales at the thought of Babe doing cartwheels on the wings of a plane, no harness or anything to keep him from falling.

“But that went out of practice pretty quickly and I was already in flight school when Pearl Harbor happened.” He shakes his head. “Who knew It’d be like this.” 

Eugene nods in agreement. Who knew it’d be like this indeed. 

“Really though, it was because I was bored and I got a reckless streak I can’t stomp out.”

Eugene looks at him, his red hair had dried into frozen strands and fallen across his forehead. Eugene wonders what the Hell he is doing walking with a fighter pilot, with anyone crazy enough to become one simply because they were bored.

“You got a girl?” Babe asks suddenly and Eugene chokes on his cigarette smoke, which Babe finds wildly amusing and he nearly bends himself in half from laughing so hard.

Eugene is still coughing when he throws the cigarette into the snow and crushes it under his heel. He shakes his head once he’s finally recovered. “No girl, I was too busy with med school.” It’s not a complete lie but it’s certainly not the full truth. 

“I gotta girl!” Babe says happily and starts going through his jacket pockets in search of something. Eugene’s heart sinks like an anchor. Of course somebody as brave and happy and kind as Babe Heffron would have a girl, Eugene was foolish to think otherwise, to think there was somebody like  _ him _ , that somebody as wonderful as Babe Heffron would even consider it.

“Here it is! It’s me and her.” Babe produces a photo with a flourish and hands it to Eugene who really has no interest in looking at it but takes it out of politeness. 

Eugene has to bite back a smile but instead frowns, a furrow dug between his brows. “Edward, this ain’t a girl.” 

“Hey now, don’t go around offending her like that.” Babe snaps, and Eugene wants to grin because it really isn’t a girl at all but a damn plane. Sure, the name  _ Doris  _ is painted in looping cursive on it’s side, and Babe is grinning next to it, his eyes half wild and gleaming like he’s in love. Eugene wants to tuck the photo away, but instead he just shakes his head and hands it back.

“Ain’t she pretty? Can’t believe she’s all mine- just mine, no other pilot flies her but me. I almost named her Allison because that’s the name of her engine before they swapped it out for a Merlin- sweetest darn sound you’ve ever heard in your life, Gene. But Bill went and named her Doris because he thought it was funny and the painter did such a good job I felt bad making him undo it, so Doris it is.” 

“She’s very pretty.”

Babe hands back the picture and Eugene frowns. Babe just presses it closer. “It’s kinda weird carrying it around but I didn’t know what to do with it. I think it’s better off with you.” 

Eugene is fighting down a grin, because it’s like sweethearts exchanging photos before one of them ships out with a grim chance of coming home again. But they aren’t lovers separated by a continent, they’re both fighting this war and there’s no place for anything like that here. 

Eugene pushes the picture back at Babe. “I can’t keep it. Really.” 

Babe’s smile falters and Eugene feels it like a punch in the gut. Babe takes the photo back and tucks it into a pocket as a gust of wind whips over the airfield, pulling up the snow from the fields and cutting across their cheeks. 

“You gotta come back, Edward.” He mutters after the minutes have stretched out. His voice is thin. 

“Shouldn’t be too bad, the Luftwaffe is nearly done for, their best fighters are long gone.” 

“Good thing I’m here.” Eugene says. He can’t look at Babe. Doesn't know what it is their doing, if they’re on the same page. He thinks they might be and he wishes they weren’t. “To stitch you up when you get back.” 

He looks at Babe then, sees his mouth half-open and his breaths coming in puffs and his brown eyes wide. His wet hair had frozen in the cold and he looks bigger than he is under the bomber jacket. He gathers himself and grins, but it isn’t the blinding one this time, something softer and awkward like he isn’t used to it, like the expression is just as new to Babe as it is to Eugene. 

“Thank god. I’ll try not to leave you with too much work.” He glances down at his watch and curses. “Shit, Gene. I gotta go, I’ll come back tomorrow if I can, thanks for the cigarette.” 

Eugene watches him go, and it’s only when he turns to leave that he sees the photograph. The bastard had left it there knowing Eugene couldn’t outright leave it, let the wind take it god knows how far. So he picks it up. Tells himself he’s going to give it back to Babe tomorrow. Tries to convince himself it’s not a lie. 

**December 1943**

**Regensburg, Germany**

Forty thousand feet was a hell of a height. Babe couldn’t see the ground at all, the clouds were laid out beneath him like fields of snow, and above is a sky so blue it hurts Babe’s eyes. It reminds him of the robin’s eggs he’d find in the park near his house. The eggs were so small in his cupped hands, even when he was a kid they seemed small. Now the sky is so big that Babe wonders if he’s been swallowed by it. 

Forty thousand feet is high enough that without his oxygen mask he’d suffocate in ten minutes flat. He was seven and a half miles above the ground, if his altimeter was to be believed. He flicks it with his gloved hand but the needle doesn't change, instead shivers run down his arm at the contact. His hands were half frozen and he flexed them to keep them awake. His temperature gauge read an icy 60 degrees below zero, and no matter how much gear they piled on him it wouldn’t be enough to keep the cold away.

Babe checks his clock beside the compass, they were now going on three hours of flight time. In a raid over France he’d already be back at the base, but Germany is a hell of a lot farther. He’d drunk his weight’s worth in coffee that morning, after he’d woken to the low growl of the B-17s starting their engines two miles away. It wasn’t enough. 

The last thing anyone would expect to hear about flying was the word  _ boring _ , but it was just that. Three hours with nothing but blue sky and clouds, nobody to talk to or a book to read would put anyone to sleep. The clamor of the Merlin engine in front of him was something he didn’t hear but felt, deep in his belly and chest and it roared through him like the beat of a bass drum. If he focused too hard on it, it would either drive him mad or rock him to sleep like his mother’s lullabies. The only thing he can do is keep  _ Doris’s  _ nose pointed forward, and crane his neck in every direction for German fighters. 

Really, he just wants to be able to pop his back. He flexes his hand over the throttle and stick to keep them from going numb in the cold. He’s wearing leather gloves with a silk lining, and another thin pair his Ma sent him in the mail, but the temperature is pushing Jesus, he’d thought Christmas in Philadelphia was cold. 

Thinking of Philly only makes him think of Bill, and it makes him look around for  _ Philly Flyer  _ and it’s blue nose before he remembers it’s some greenie flying her, not Bill. Babe looks to his left and Liebgott is there, his gaze pointed forward, and further down is Malarkey. On his right there’s Luz, beyond that Toye, and at the front of them all is Spiers, his flying steady and sure. 

They’re flying in a formation of 800 bombers and 600 fighters, and they fill the sky as far as Babe can see, the furthest barely bigger than a songbird in the distance. 

Babe drums his fingers on the dashboard and watches his fuel gauge before looking back around, they’re nearly at their target, if the bomber’s slight downward angle is anything to go by. He pulls out the small map of Germany pinned to his thigh, the target marked in lustros red. He can hear the pop of flak beneath him, just under the clouds and his heart picks up, he’s grateful for the change in pace as he pushes  _ Doris  _ towards the earth.

He flies through the cloud, and he can’t see anything but white, even the tips of his wings are covered with it and he bites back the fear that he’s going to ram straight into the plane in front of him, but then he’s below the clouds and the city of Regensburg unfurls beneath him. It’s Babe’s first glance of Germany, and the city is a melange of old white and brown buildings with sunset roofs and tall church steeples. The streets are tight and winding as the wires of a switchboard, and the huge Danube river spears the city in half. It’d be beautiful if it wasn’t for the columns of smoke rising from crumpled buildings consumed in flame.

Babe is in the middle of the fleet, there’s still quite a few planes behind him and the ones at the front had already turned back for England. He flies just above the bombers and just under the clouds, barely out of range from the mountainous German 88s. The flak cracks beneath him, dark popcorn shaped clouds of doom. Unlike the bombers that can eat up flak like Sunday dinner, the smaller P-51 can only take a handful of hits. 

Babe is scanning the sky for German fighters. His heart is in his throat, chest tight. It’s the looking that’s the worst, the waiting. He doesn't want them dropping down from the clouds again, doesn't ever want to be in that position again. 

Beneath him the B-17s discharge their bombs, and they drop like fallen birds to the aircraft factory. Some of them miss. Some of them fall on homes and businesses. On civilians. 

The bombers pull away, and Babe watches Spiers to see what he does. They fly forward for a few more minutes, before he too pulls up and away and the rest follow. 

Wherever the fighters are, they aren’t here.

**Southern England**

Babe lands  _ Doris  _ with forty minutes of fuel still in her tank without a dent or scratch on her. He collapses back in his seat once he’s pulled her off the runway, the tension that had been running through his entire body like a livewire evaporates and leaves him a boneless heap. He doesn't think his legs will work no matter how hard he tries, and his throat is parched from six hours without water and gulping down the oxygen solution that his mask fed to him. The adrenaline rush that had come from flying over Germany through a sky full of flak had long worn off, and he’d been fighting exhaustion the rest of the way. 

Babe rests his eyes for a moment, and the only thing that keeps him from passing out right there in the plane is Martin thumping on the canopy with a look so mean it wakes him right up. Babe disconnects his airmask and rolls the canopy back. He pushes up his goggles as Martin pears around the cockpit. 

“Jesus Babe did you even fly her?” Martin was the head of his ground crew, he was the head of some of the others too, but he seemed fond of Babe even if he didn’t voice it. “Not a single fucking bullet hole in all of six hours?”

“Gee Sarge, here I was thinking you’d be glad to see me.” 

“I’m glad to see  _ Doris _ , I don’t know about your sorry ass.” He looks again at the cockpit and Babe isn’t sure what he’s looking for until he says, “At least you didn’t vomit the army noodles all over it and made poor Julian clean it up.”

“Hey, that was one time!” Babe holds up his pointer finger to emphasize. “And I helped Julian clean it up, just ask him.” 

“You sat there and handed me some rags looking greener than a boot!” Julian shouts from the front of the plane. 

Martin shakes his head and takes another look down the plane’s side and front. “At least you made this job easy for us. Can you stand?” 

“Might need some help.” Babe admits as he works off his safety belt and chute straps that climbs across his body like a spider web. It takes a few minutes of struggling as Babe forces his legs to work for him, they’re jittery and limp from being buzzed by the engine for six hours and then nearly frozen solid. He can’t feel his hands or cheeks, and the cold English wind isn’t doing much to help. 

“You go get your hands warmed up.” Martin says once they’re finally down. 

“Wish it was just my hands, sarge.” 

Martin just shakes his head again. 

Babe’s glad that the debriefing doesn't last long. The German fighters never made an appearance, which every airman was grateful for, but the brass didn’t seem too happy with it because the entire operation was set up to lure the German fighters out and cripple their forces for the big invasion they weren’t supposed to know about. 

Really though, the whole thing just makes him nervous. Nervous about what tomorrow could bring, knowing that day after day he would be running six to eight hour missions over occupied Germany, and that they wouldn’t be so lucky everytime. His leg starts bouncing halfway through Sink’s presentation, but he’s still fighting to keep his eyes open. 

Babe had been itching to get back into the sky on a real mission for the past couple of weeks, his hands buzzing for the controls. Now, he can’t understand that at all. If he lets his mind drift, he’s watching the massive B-17 crash into the sea and split into a million parts, and the only man who was able to bail out doing so too late. He sees the Messerschmidt crumpling Bill’s plane and the blood-stained photo of Fran he’d had to grab from the cockpit after the ordeal. Babe still doesn't feel warm, the cold had settled itself deep in his blood and soul, filling his bones like sand.

When he reaches the infirmary, he’s expecting to be met with the chaos and flood of patients that comes after every mission, but the worst injury looks to be a guy who took a piece of shrapnel to the arm, and another who was covered in knicks and scratches from the glass of a shattered canopy. 

Babe doesn't really see them though. His eyes go straight to Eugene. 

He’s helping bandage up a shrapnel wound, but he looks up when Babe steps in and his hands freeze while his eyes go wide. His brain rewinds to the day before, had he been too forward? Was he not forward enough? Was leaving the picture behind dumb? Did Eugene even see it? Did it mean anything to him? Babe’s heart had been thudding like a faulty engine, his stomach so knotted he didn’t know how to breathe. It'd been like asking Irene to the highschool prom. All Babe had done was joke about  _ Doris  _ being the only girl in his life, and it got him this nervous? He starts thinking that maybe he shouldn’t have come here at all, but a promise is a promise and Eugene would have his head if he didn’t. 

The pilot Eugene was patching up coughs awkwardly and Eugene looks back at his patient like he’s wondering how he got there. His hands go back to work though, and he locks eyes with Babe before he cocks his head towards one of the chairs. 

Once he’s finished and handed the guy off to one of the nurses, he finally approaches Babe, who very suddenly doesn't feel tired at all. He feels Eugene’s gaze down to his toes, and if he’d been in a better state of mind he would have been worried about his sweat-soaked hair. 

“Heffron.” Eugene says, and there’s a million things in that. God, they’d only been apart for a day and it left them both like this, half breathless and desperate to see the other okay. What would the next couple of months- no,  _ years _ be like?

Eugene’s hand strays towards his pocket before he seems to think better of it. 

“Hey, Gene.” Babe smiles. “I got a hell of a bite.” He points towards his cheek and holds up his hands, his fingertips red, as though all this can explain why he came here. 

Eugene shakes his head, but he’s grateful to fall back into the roll of doctor. He takes Babe’s face in his hands gently, more gently than Babe’s ever been held in his life. Eugene’s eyes are hard with concentration, but soft around the edges. Eugene rubs his thumb over the frostbite, which is hard to the touch. He frowns. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s just warm.”

Eugene’s frown deepens. “How cold does it get up there?” 

Babe shifts, he doesn't want to say. “Negative sixty.” 

“You’re kidding.” Eugene hisses. “They can’t leave you like that for seven hours.” 

Babe shrugs, but Eugene’s touch is going straight to his heart and he feels it down to his toes. He rubs his thumb over the bite again, it’s in the thin shape of the space between his goggles and facemask. Babe shivers even though he’s not cold anymore. 

Eugene grabs his hands inspecting his reddened fingertips, carefully running his own over them. He shakes his head and Babe sighs. He feels like he’s gonna fall apart. 

“It ain’t bad.” He says at last. “There ain’t much I can do for your fingers, just keep them warm and dry, but they’ll sting as they reheat and might be numb for the next few days.” His eyes go up to his cheek, just beneath his eye. “I’ll have to put a bandage on here to keep it warm, it’s a bit worse off.” 

Babe nods and Eugene steps away to grab a bandage. Babe presses his frozen fingers to his cheek, he’s half grateful when Eugene steps away because it was like he was draining in sensation, and he doesn't know how to hold Eugene’s attention like that, not when it’s spilling out of his hands like water from a bucket because he’s shaking. 

Eugene returns and rubs the bandage on, his eyes land somewhere below Babe’s eyes before flicking up, and Jesus Christ, no girl has ever done this to him. He thinks his heart stops, the world narrows and he gets tunnel vision because all he can see is Eugene. 

Then he’s pulling away, collecting his things and not meeting Babe’s eye. Babe doesn't know if he’s relieved or not. 

“Will you,” he starts, his voice dry. “tell Bill I made it back alright?” 

“Sure.” Eugene meets Babe’s eye. “Keep those fingers warm.” 

He swallows and nods. “Sure, Doc.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a few historical notes for anybody who wants to know:  
> P-51s only entered the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces in the Winter of 1943, so Babe would have been one of the first Americans to fly them in combat. Throughout 1944 other fighter escorts were slowly exchanged for the P-51. It was in January of 1944 that tactics changed and fighters would be sent out ahead of the bombers in a "fighter sweep" to intercept the German fighters before they could reach the bombers. The eighth air force would be reorganized into the United States Strategic Army Air Forces in January as well when Doolittle took over as general, who had been the first American to bomb Tokyo. The US however wouldn't see Berlin until March. 
> 
> The B-17s flew at an average altitude of 40,000 feet, and the P-51 was the only fighter capable to performing well at that altitude. Cockpits were not pressurized, so pilots had to rely on oxygen masks in order to get enough air. Frostbite was extremely common, because it really did get to about -60 degrees Celsius, about -76 Fahrenheit. Not cute. The pilots wore many layers, and most wore non regulation clothing like sweaters underneath their uniforms.


	3. Trumpets of Jericho

Eugene hadn’t been in a bar since he joined the red cross. It’s a bit of an embarrassing disclosure that tended to leave most gaping at him like he’d just told them their son passed away. After all, war and alcohol went pretty well together, as one was just an escape from the other. 

The pubs in England were a far-cry from the backwater, unlicensed shacks in Bayou Chene, and a leap from the rowdy joints near LSU. There was a civilness to the pub, despite the exorbitant number of airmen that had flooded to the small establishment. The town the pub belonged to was even smaller, nearly all of its profits stemming from the joint. Whenever the men got passes they were allowed to walk the half mile journey to the town. 

Eugene wasn’t really sure how his own passes worked, but nobody but him protested when Babe stepped into the infirmary after a six hour mission and declared “I need a drink!” and proceeded to drag Eugene into town. Bill had wanted to come too, but Eugene had insisted he wasn’t well enough yet. 

The pub was packed, and the walls were covered in photos that dated back to at least sixty years before, although some were more recent portraits of the local boys who’d shipped out. There wasn’t enough room for a dance floor, but English girls and nurses sat at tables and leaned into the pilots while Mrs. Riley glared darkly. The radio hummed a steady stream of Glenn Miller, Vera Lynn, Sinatra, and Billie Holiday, although the music was drowned by laughter and the clink of glasses. 

“This is quaint.” Eugene says as Babe steers them towards the last vacant table. 

“Peachy.” Babe agrees as he sits across from Eugene. He glances at the bar. “What do you want?” 

Eugene shrugs. “Whatever doesn't taste like piss.” 

“Good luck with that one.” Babe stands. “Be right back.” 

Eugene watches him disappear into the crowd of men curling around the counter. A handful of the other pilots they’d walked over with were calling out orders, practically falling over themselves in order to get a drink. On the walk over they’d been wildly amused that Babe had made friends with Bill’s doctor and brought him to the pub. Muck pointed out that if anything were to happen to Babe he’d have first rate care, that the whole thing was built on selfish inclinations. Neither of them really laughed at that. 

At the bar Babe laughed and joked with them, his smile larger than the sun. The pilots wore their brown dress uniforms and somebody had started a game of darts. Babe gave them a wide berth. Eugene poked at the empty milk bottle on the table, the dregs of some sort of alcohol still sitting at the bottom. It was a stark discrepancy to the white-washed halls of the infirmary, with it’s lingering stink of antiseptic and copper. Eugene feels like he’s been yanked out from his comfort zone and dropped in a pot of water like a crawfish. 

Babe on the other hand, looks like he’d been raised on barstools and grew up on whiskey instead of milk. He laughs easily at the men’s banter, fires it right back and takes their insults and nuding good naturedly. He makes a bet with Liebgott as to who would bag their first tank. Eugene’s just glad no one tries to come over and talk to him, some of the girls glance at him, but lose interest when they see the lack of uniform on his shoulders. 

Babe plops three fingers of whiskey in front of him as he sits down. Eugene raises his brows. “You tryna get me drunk, Edward?”

“Gee, wish I got a recording of that one.” Babe laughs. “You’ve finally moved on from ‘Heffron.’” He takes a sip from his beer and grimaces. The glass clinks against the wooden table.

“Taste like piss?” 

“Yep.” He reaches for his water and takes a swig. “I haven’t had anything since the accident, alcohol technically isn’t allowed on the base apart from medicinal purposes and I haven’t bothered to nab a pass.” 

Eugene takes a sip of his whiskey, and is surprised when it isn’t the awful rationed shit. Babe knew what he was doing it seems. “Why are you here now?”

The question had been rattling around his brain the whole night, but Babe didn’t seem real inclined to talk about it. 

Babe shrugs. “It’s Christmas Eve, I guess. Seemed like the best time to do it.” 

“You flying tomorrow?” 

Babe looks up. “What? Oh, yeah. It’s only over France this time, they’re giving us a bit of a break, some of the others are going to Germany though. They think it’ll be a real punch to morale if we get them on Christmas.” Eugene makes a face and Babe nods in agreement. “Yeah, not sure if I agree with it all. Don’t seem right to have war on Christmas.” 

Babe looks at his watch. “It’d be around three back home. Ma’s probably got the whole family over and is forcing them to eat her clove-stuffed ham. It’s too bad Bill couldn’t be back in time for Christmas.” 

Eugene takes another sip. “I tried. Senior doctor wasn’t having any of it, says he still needs a couple of weeks.” 

Babe studies his beer. “Maybe I can smuggle him back something.” 

“He’d like that.” He agrees. He wants to know why Babe is really here, why he felt the need to drag Eugene along with him, but Babe is still a few drinks away from giving him the answer. Eugene just finishes his whiskey while Babe watches the dart game. The dim lighting makes his hair look darker, the shadows under his eyes deeper. There’s a Christmas tree across the room, with candles instead of lights that make Eugene nervous because the floor is sticky with alcohol. The radio swaps Glenn Miller for Vera Lynn’s soothing tone, and  _ White Christmas  _ floats like gentle smoke over the pub. 

“I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve.” Babe pushes his water glass around the table, purposefully not looking at his beer. “Don’t even feel like it. I mean, it’s my third Christmas away from home, but those others didn’t seem so bad.” 

“Three?” Eugene repeats. 

Babe nods. “I joined up just before Pearl Harbor, I was in Waynesboro at the time, about a month into my nine-month training.” He shakes his head. “Bill says we had a sixth sense for when to go get ourselves involved.” He gestures at Eugene’s drink. “Want a refill?”

He shakes his head. “No thanks. I got work tomorrow.” 

“Volunteering.” Babe corrects. 

Eugene shakes his head. “Least you’re getting paid for your troubles.”

“You could join up too.” Babe points out, taking another drink. “You’d at least be getting some money.”

“I could end up in some field hospital, or across the world on some island I don’t know the name of. I don’t know if I could leave you like that.” 

The words are out before he can pull them back, and then they just sit there between them on that little wooden table in the south of England. Eugene searches Babe’s face and he doesn't look away, not even when Babe looks up and there’s more in that look than Eugene knows what to do with. 

“I’d be okay.” 

“Maybe.” Eugene leans back and starts wishing that Babe had gone back and gotten him more whiskey. “But I’d be the last person on God’s green earth to know if you weren’t.” He doesn't know if it’s the three fingers of whiskey in his empty stomach, the dim lighting or the Christmas tree, or if it’s Babe’s dress uniform, but he suddenly feels like being honest. “My cousin is a bombardier in the Pacific. I know I ain’t gonna know if something’s happened to him until at least a month later. I got a letter from my Grandmother today, and I was so scared it was gonna be about Merriel that I couldn’t open it the whole morning.” He shakes his head. “Turns out she just wanted to send me some candy and make sure I was praying before bed.” 

“Candy?” Babe latches onto that word like he’s five years old. Eugene can’t find it in himself to blame him. Candy had come to be as hard to get gasoline and stockings. Eugene knew that the pilots got Hershey bars every now and then, but you had to hide it well or eat it because it’d be gone faster than a lamb in a slaughter. 

Eugene digs around in his pocket and slides a candy cane across the table, a red ribbon wrapped around it. “Merry Christmas.” 

Babe snatches it up like it’s a twenty dollar bill and the wrapper crinkles between his fingers. “You’re an angel, you know that? Honest to God.” 

Eugene shrugs. “Thank my grandmother.” 

Babe shakes his head and tucks it away into the pocket of his A-10. “Once this whole mess is over I’ll come down and thank her in person.” He glances at the dart board again as a cheer rings out and Liebgott curses up a storm. “I’m real sorry ‘bout your cousin, though. Every day I thank the stars I ain’t in the Pacific.” 

Eugene’s glad the conversation has steered away from the  _ I can’t do this without you  _ talk, but it’s brimming under the surface and they’re both forcing it down. They talk for a little longer, swapping stories of back home and their crazy grandmothers. Babe is telling a rather animated tale of the first time he got drunk and he ended up dancing with every girl at the soda fountain, when he breaks the water glass in his hands. Glass clatters across the table and onto the floor, shards glittering like fallen stars. Water spills, reflecting back the dim christmas lights. Babe and Eugene go quiet as the plague. 

A drop of blood falls from Babe’s fist onto the film of water covering the table. It catches and spreads like ink. They both stare at it, like they can’t believe what they’re seeing. Another drop drips from his clenched hand. Eugene swears he can hear a splash, loud as a stone on the Mississippi. 

Eugene grabs Babe’s fist and opens it. He ignores Babe’s hisses as he brushes aside the fragments of glass. There’s a huge slice through his palm and Eugene’s stomach curls. Red seeps out of it and stains Eugene’s fingers. 

“Gosh, I’m sorry, Gene.” Babe groans. “I guess I just gotta make a mess wherever I go.” 

Eugene purses his lips and brushes out the last few shards. He reaches into his coat for the blue nurse’s scarf he knows is still in there from earlier when he’d accidentally grabbed it instead of a roll of bandages. He’d forgotten to give it back to  Renée. 

“You better pay that old woman back for this glass.” He says, wrapping Babe’s hand tightly with the scarf. His palm is calloused, and his fingers are long. His grandmother would call them pianist hands. Eugene is gentle, holds his hand like it’s an egg about to break. He purses his lips as he ties it off. Babe hisses again.

“Gotta be tight, Edward.” He explains and Babe pulls his hand back as he shakes his head. 

Babe flexes his hand. “Sorry about that.” 

Eugene taps the side of his head. “Personal doctor, remember?” 

He stares at him, brow furrowed, before a crooked smile breaks over his face. His eyes crinkle as he looks at Eugene. “Did you just tell a  _ joke _ ?” 

He smiles thinly. “I’ve been known to do so.” 

Before the pub can empty, Babe pours the rest of his beer into a flask for Bill and tucks it into the folds of his jacket. They leave a few extra coins on the damp table for the glass, and a few of the pilots call out to them as they go, but Babe waves them away. 

Outside the air lacks the humid heat of the pub, and a clear wind meets them as they step out. The clouds have cleared to reveal hundreds of stars glittering above, freckling the dark skin of the night. Eugene tips his head back to drink them in, back home he would have to look between the branches of the Cypress trees, but here on the road between the base and the town there’s a clear view of the sky. Babe tips his head back to look too, his hands buried in his jacket pockets and his breath coming in clouds. 

“You think we’ll see Santa?” 

Eugene snorts. “Maybe he’ll bring you some gloves.” 

Babe held up his hand, the frostbite that kissed his fingertips was gone and replaced by calluses. The spot on his cheek still stood, a faint red mark beneath his eye. Eugene wanted to rub it away with his thumbs. 

“My Ma sent me a sweater that I can wear under my uniform. Some pants, too.” 

As they walk the sounds of the pub drift away like clouds in the wind. “I’m sure you’ll appreciate that tomorrow.” 

“Sure.” Babe agrees. “But it ain’t candy.” 

They walk a few minutes in silence, neither of them drunk enough to flush out the bitter cold. Babe starts kicking a rock again as an owl hoots. If Eugene squints, he can forget there’s a war at all and it’s almost like they’re highschool sweethearts going on a walk with their mothers peering through the curtains. He wonders if he would have met Babe at all if there had never been a war and his pleasant mood sours. 

Babe lights a cigarette and wordlessly offers one to Eugene. He shakes his head, “No, you paid for the drinks.” 

“Yeah but you patched up my hand and gave me candy like I’m five years old again, so take it.” Babe shakes the pack and Eugene slides one out with a huff. 

He lights the cigarette, the flame glowing like a searchlight in his palm before he flicks his thumb and the world is thrown into darkness once more. He misses the light. Can’t stop thinking that it looks like Babe’s hair. 

Eugene hands back the light. “Remember when you said, ‘I’ll be okay, Gene. You don’t gotta worry bout me.’” 

Babe snorts. “And then I went and cut up my hand ten minutes later.” He looks again at the scarf on his hand and traces it with his thumb. “You know, all the pilots got these good luck charms and I ain’t got one yet.” 

“You ain’t using that bloody rag as a good luck charm.” 

“Why not? It reminds me of you.” Babe shrugs. 

“I’ll find you a proper good luck charm if it means that much to ya.” 

He kicks the rock down the path and stuffs his hands back into his pockets. Maybe Eugene should have gotten him a rock to kick around for Christmas. 

“Yo u know, I dragged you out here because I was tired of only seeing you in the infirmary. I guess I just wanted to know if we could still be friends outside of all that.” He gestures towards the sky and general direction of the base. Babe shakes his head. “But the run today was hard. We lost the greenie flying Bill’s old plane and I felt relieved that Bill wasn’t in it, and it made me feel real guilty. What kind of guy feels relieved when someone falls out of the sky?” He drags a hand through his pomaded hair and it becomes the messy clump Eugene is used too. 

“If it makes ya feel better, sometimes I’ll watch the planes come in and land.” He says around his cigarette. “Sometimes I’ll notice they’re one or two short. Everytime I’m relieved when it ain’t yours.” Eugene stops and turns toward Babe, the lightless complex of the airbase is beneath them as they crest the hill. The runways sit quiet and empty, and the blackout curtains are pulled down tight. A bird sings over the fields, carrying on the wind across the countryside.

Eugene jabs a finger at Babe’s chest. “You can’t keep carrying around this guilt. It’ll rot ya inside-out.” 

“Gene-” 

“This war is gonna leave us all without a lot to carry.” Eugene pulls out his smoke. “We don’t got time to do deal with that now. Especially you. You know that. While you’re tearing yourself up about what you could have done better, a German is gonna drop outta the sun and shoot you between the eyes, and then where will that leave you?” His shoulders are tight and Babe is looking at him like he’s never seen him in his life. Neither says it but the words  _ where will that leave me  _ hang there too, just as much as the silver moon and stars. “You ain’t gotta feel ashamed for being glad your friend is okay. It ain’t a sin.” 

“It’s not during the mission that’s hard.” Babe says at last. “It’s the after. It’s laying in my bunk at night, sitting in the debriefing room and finding an empty chair. You see, I get these dreams, Gene. These dreams where I come back to the base but the Luftwaffe’s bombed it to Kingdom Come. There ain’t anything left but ash and when I land the infirmary is gone too. Bill’s gone,  Renée’s gone,” he swallows. “You’re gone.” 

Eugene looks at him. Looks at Babe looking at him and he can’t remember a single thing. Everything in his chest cynches up like a vise. Looking at Babe is like looking at the summer sky.

“You don’t worry about me.” Eugene says after what seems like hours, and it’s loud as a firecracker in the quiet night. “You just worry about yourself up there. I do enough worrying for the both of us.” 

Eugene lives in a room that is barely larger than a closet. The room is two floors up from the infirmary and he shares it with Spina. There is a sliver of a window that offers a view of the hangars and fields, a wardrobe crammed with extra medical coats and sweaters, and a desk that’s covered in records and paperwork. It’s where Eugene finds himself now, a handful of days after Christmas with New Year’s coming up quick. A radio on the desk boasted about the recent British victory in the Bay of Biscay and read some statements from the president. 

He scrubs a hand over his face and looks out the window. It is late afternoon and the clouds are thin. Babe had been mistaken about having a raid on Christmas day, the USAAF had been kind enough to give the pilots the week off. Eugene suspected it was only so the brass could get drunk for once. 

The new year of 1944 gleamed like a freshly minted coin on the horizon. It was laid out like a massive puzzle before him, and the uncertainty of what the year would bring dug at Eugene’s frayed nerves. Roosevelt had announced that General Eisenhour would be in charge of the Allied Invasion set to take place that year. Babe told Eugene that the entire coast of occupied Europe was fortified and sealed like a safe. One thousand six-hundred and seventy miles of bunkers, pill boxes, machine gun nests, anti aircraft guns, and mined beaches. An invasion of Europe seemed like a harebrained crusade. 

Eugene takes a sip of the cold coffee. He knew that worrying about the future wouldn’t do him any good or bring about peace of mind. 

His medical coat is thrown over the back of his chair, and he should be sleeping right now but whenever he tries to sleep he is overwhelmed by thoughts. His tired mind drags to the surface nearly every interaction he’s ever had with Babe, from the mundane hospital visits and the times Eugene had shushed him and Bill to be quiet, to Christmas Eve and the time Babe gave him the photograph. 

Eugene pulled it out now, folds ran down the middle and sides, the corners rubbed raw. The photo is dated back to October, when the first P-51s had started coming in. Eugene wonders if this was the first time Babe had flown in it. He guessed it was before Babe actually flew in it- he’d confessed that the first time he’d tried out the plane he’d vomited. Eugene smiles thinly. How the Hell did he get involved with a pilot of all people?

The truth was, he carried the photo everywhere. He carried it with him as he did his rounds in the infirmary, when he went to the mess hall to eat, when he took smoke breaks, when Babe came to visit. It was always there, to the point Eugene got worried when he didn’t have it. Stressed in the same way that others worried about their keys or wallet.

Eugene hadn’t seen much of Babe over the past few days, he still came to visit Bill, but he seemed intent on not talking about Christmas Eve and Eugene let him because he didn’t want to deal with the fallout either. 

But he kept the photo especially close when he knew Babe wasn’t there. That he wasn’t safe. He sent a prayer to God every morning when he heard the planes leaving, the growl of their engines filling every corner of Eugene’s soul. 

The door opens with a creak and Eugene shoves the photo under the stack of papers as Spina walks in with a yawn. He eyes Eugene and his stack of papers warily. “You’re really tryna do that now?” 

Spina has the same accent as Babe. Eugene doesn't think he’ll ever be able to hear it again without thinking of Babe. He nods. “I ain’t gonna do it anytime else. Aren’t you on call right now?” 

He shrugs. “Dr. Robinson told me to go. Said we weren’t about to be bombarded with injuries and I look dead on my feet. Sent a lot of the nurses back too.” Spina collapses on his bed. “You gonna finish that coffee?” 

Eugene hands it over but his frown is back in place. “I should go down there.” 

“No you shouldn’t.” Spina kicks off his boots. “He’s in a right mood, apparently he knows something we don’t.” 

He rubs his face. “That don’t make me feel any better.” 

“Hey turns that off will ya? I can only listen to so much propaganda.” Spina gestures at the radio. 

Eugene turns the knob and the little box goes silent. “It’s supposed to be uplifting.” 

“They should have Betty Grable stop by.” Spina yanks the blackout curtain down and lies down on the bed like he’d been wishing for it all day. “They should do another USO show. That was real swell.” 

“Who?” 

“Jesus, Gene! You been living under a rock?” 

“I grew up in a swamp.” He offers half-heartedly. 

Spina laughs. “I’ll show you a picture if you go to sleep. You look like a walking ghost.” 

Eugene shakes his head and stands. “I’m gonna go see if he needs a hand down there.” 

“Babe’s not there.” 

He turns so fast he sees stars. “ _ What _ ?” 

Spina raises his eyebrows at Eugene’s reaction. “He came down earlier, talked to Bill for a bit. But he ain’t there now, so you can sleep.” 

“Why’d you bring him up?” Eugene frowns, carefully keeping his voice light. 

“You’re a hard man to crack, Doc.” Spina says, and in the darkness Eugene can’t read his face. “But somehow that pilot’s gone and done what none of the rest of us have.” 

The wail shatters the night like a baseball bat to a pane of glass, and Eugene wakes as though a bucket of ice had been poured over his head. He bolts from his bed with the practiced grace of someone used to waking at the drop of a hat, and crashes straight into Spina. His roommate mutters a few choice words while clutching his head. Eugene is already throwing on his shoes, his heart in his throat. 

“Goddamn bastards.” Spina curses over the scream of the air raid siren as he wrenches on his shoes. “Can’t get one night of fucking peace.” 

Eugene slips on his medical coat, muttering in French under his breath. He looks to Spina and hisses, “Where are the pilots?” 

“The pilots?” Spina repeats, his shoes untied and his own med coat in his arms as he follows Eugene out the door at a run. The nurses are coming out of their rooms, still dressed in their pajamas. “What on earth are you worried about them for? We gotta get the patients to the bunker.” 

They hurtle down the stairs, the nurses desperately trying to tie their hair back, their flats clicking on the linoleum. It’d been a long time since the Luftwaffe had made an appearance here, a long time since Eugene had heard the bone-gnashing cry of the air raid siren. He was convinced it was the most horrible sound on earth, right up there with the scream of a dying man. It makes his skin crawl and his heart sprint like a racehorse. He thinks about the dream Babe told him about, about him coming back and finding nothing left but ash and flame. 

The worst part is, is that he knows he should be worried about the patients now, about himself, but all he can think of is Babe. Every pulse of his heart, every rush of his blood and pull of his muscle sings his name. 

They reach the infirmary just as the first fighter is taking off, the roar of engine after engine coming to life permeates under the siren’s scream. Eugene crosses himself as he pushes past the rush of nurses on night shift bringing out patients on stretchers, or supporting those with a limp as they make their way downstairs to the bunker. Eugene rushes to the amputee ward, stepping out of the way of a nurse pushing a gurney past. 

Bill is up, leaning against a pair of crutches and helping up a kid with his arm sawed off to the elbow. There’s another man with his foot gone, looking around for a pair of crutches. Eugene grabs a pair and hands them to him. 

“You gonna be alright?” He asks, his eyes searching the man’s tight face. 

He nods. “Go help them, I think that kid’s in shock.” 

Eugene goes to them. Bill is trying to coax the kid, Blythe, to get up and follow him. “You’ve got eyes, Blythe!” Bill is saying. “You’re following my hand  you can fucking see, okay?”

“What do you mean he can’t see?” Eugene frowns. “His arm’s gone not his eyes.” 

“That’s what I keep telling him, Doc! But he don’t believe me none.”

Alright, Eugene thinks. Okay. He’s dealt with this- hysterical blindness wasn’t unheard of, but he’d never seen it himself. It tended to be a result of combat fatigue, but as far as he knew Blythe had been an anti aircraft gunner before the 90mm M1 fell on him. 

Eugene leans closer to Blythe and waves his hand a few inches from his nose, his wide blue eyes don’t follow it. “Blythe.” Eugene says and his eyes focus some place a little over his left shoulder. “It’s Doc Roe, you remember me?” Blythe nods. “Good. What happened?” 

“I don’t… there were planes, sir. The siren. Just like now. I couldn’t tell which was ours in the darkness. I think I shot down one of ours. Everything went dark.” 

Eugene swallows and Bill tenses beside him but stays quiet. “Blythe, that was weeks ago. You’re in the infirmary now.” 

“But I can hear the planes and the guns, sir.” 

Eugene looks at Bill who just shrugs, the man with the missing foot is stopped at the door, watching them. “I’m gonna take you somewhere where you ain’t gonna hear them, okay? Where you’ll be safe. But you’re gonna have to stand up, you hear? Gonna have to walk cause none of us can carry ya. That good?” 

Blythe nods slowly, and Eugene helps untangle him from the sheets. Blythe holds his missing elbow as he takes a few steps, his grip tight as a blood pressure sleeve. 

“You’re okay. I got ya.” Eugene urges. 

The four of them make it outside and into the hall where nurses are still helping patients down. It’s when they reach the stairs that the ground shakes and a hollow boom rattles the air like a cymbal. Eugene sways on his feet, but manages to catch the man with the missing foot before he goes down. He picks up his crutch, panicked people move all around them and Eugene bites back his own fear. Dust falls from the ceiling like rain. 

“Sir?” Blythe calls his voice tight.

“I’m right here, Blythe.” Eugene says. “We’re almost there, but you gotta go down these stairs for me. Can you step down? That’s it, just one after the other.” 

When he looks back up Bill is carefully making his way down. His two crutches are tucked under one arm while his other clings to the railing. Beside them Spina and Renée carry a cot with a groaning pilot inside it, their steps careful but hurried. Another blast rocks them and Bill nearly loses his grip on the stairs. Behind him, the man without the foot has gone pale with his eyes fixed on the daunting set of stairs plunging deep beneath the ground. 

“Hold on!” Eugene calls to him. “I’ll be right there!” He turns to Blythe. “Come on, take a few more steps.” 

By some miracle he gets Blythe down the stairs before handing him off to  Renée when she comes back. He helps the man without the foot down, Bill in front. The space where his leg should be seems larger than ever. The man Eugene is holding onto his shaking like a leaf, but he grits his teeth and takes the steps one crutch and swing at a time. Machine gun fires pops above them, peppering the wall and shattering windows. He thinks of Babe. Nearly forgets where he is. 

The trip down is a steady stream of, “I got you. It’s alright, you’re nearly there. I ain’t gonna let you fall.” The cacophony is louder than an orchestra, as the siren continues it’s ghostly blare and the sky above them is filled with the snap of gunfire and the roar of engines. Occasionally the ground rocks like an earthquake and pieces of plaster fall and crash onto the stairs. As soon as they’re down the stairs Eugene helps the man back into his crutches before racing back up them as dust and plaster fall into his hair and eyes. He sees the shape of a fighter zing past the windows, and cracks fill the panes like spiderwebs. The lights flicker, a few burst like squashed bugs. 

He directs more injured men down the stairs and helps two nurses cart a stretcher down. He’s pretty sure that that’s just about everyone, but he makes his way through the wards, checking every single bed for patients left behind or passed out. When he finds none, he starts tearing back the covers of every bed and cot and empty gurney. He doesn't know what he’s looking for. The ground shutters violently, another light goes out. Outside the windows are orange with flame. 

“Eugéne!” Renée cries, appearing from seemingly nowhere and dragging on his arm. How hadn’t he heard her approach? “What are you doing?” 

“Babe!” He cries, voice tight. He turns toward her. “Where is he? Is he downstairs?” 

“Babe?” She repeats, her eyes dark with worry. “Babe is flying his plane, he is not here. You have to come with me,  _ oui _ ? It is not safe here.” 

“Babe isn’t there.” He’s shaking just as much as the man with the missing foot. “I have to find him, Renée.” 

She starts tugging his elbow, dragging him from the empty infirmary. “You have to come with me.” She repeats. “ _ Le bien _ ?” 

Half-numb and boneless, he lets her pull him down the stairs as the earth moves like jell-o around them. The blare of the siren gets quieter and quieter with every step. “Where is he?” He mutters in French, voice slurred. He says it again and again like the brag of his old heart. Renée just ignores him, continues dragging him down until the heavy door of the bunker shuts behind them. 

When it’s over, a Lieutenant knocks on the door and urges them out. Eugene helps carry up gurneys and patients who can’t walk. He helps them back into their beds and checks bandages and stitches. The siren is quiet now, and so are the skies. It’s an unsettling quiet, after so much noise. All of their ears are ringing, the wail of the siren had settled like a horrible coldness into their bones.

Renée finds him tying off a stitch that had come loose on a man’s arm when she takes the needle from him with a shake of her head. 

“You’re still shaking. Go find him. See if any pilots are hurt.” She says firmly, her eyes hard. Eugene stares. Renée cocks her head towards the door. “ _ Aller _ .” 

Eugene searches her gaze but she stares right back. He spares a glance towards the patient before he stands, pushing past the gaggle of people in the hall. At first he walks, but then he’s running, careening like a drunk down the hallways towards the hangars. His ears are buzzing from the explosions and his legs are mush from being rocked. Everytime he shuts his eyes he finds Babe, bleeding out in his cockpit or his plane smashing into the earth like a rubber ball. 

There is another set of running footsteps coming closer, Eugene’s entire life is in his throat, he can taste it on his tongue. Eugene rounds a corner and a set of arms just about lifts him off the ground. He clings to Babe’s shoulders, his arms, his back, his hair, anything he can get his hands on. He smells of exhaust and army soap. He is real and solid and tangible. He doesn't disappear into a plume of ash or smoke, he stays in Eugene’s arms and doesn't go. He wants to cry with it. Babe shakes. He only pulls him closer, until there is no place where he begins and Eugene ends. 

“Shhhh.” He runs his fingers through Babe’s hair. He can feel the shape of the blue scarf on Babe’s palm beneath his gloves where it presses into Eugene’s back. “I’m right here, Babe. I’m here.” 

“There was a Stuka.” He mutters. “It was aimed at the infirmary, and it was screaming so bad. I took it out. Jesus Christ. Thought that was gonna be it.” Babe pulls back enough so they can look at each other, and there's a million things in his eyes and they all take the vague whisper-thin shape of something Eugene doesn't know what to do with. 

“I’m here.” He says again, and they’ve been holding each other for too long and there’s no explanation for it. They teeter on the knife-edge of the known and unknown. He spread himself thin as icing, made himself whole again for Babe. Every time Babe goes in the air it’s like Eugene’s heart is flying around, bare and beating and horribly unshielded. “I’m right here.” 

Babe looks at him for a long moment. He smiles. “You did it.” 

“Did what?” He frowns. Outside a million fires burn. 

“You called me Babe.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More historical Notes:   
> \- "The Atlantic Wall" was the German fortifications along the coast of Europe and it stretched from the south of France to the north of Norway. Hitler put Rommel in charge of it, and Rommel called for much more than the Germans were capable of giving. Much of the infrastructure they built is still in place today.   
> \- The Stuka Dive Bomber or the Junkers Ju 87 were fitted with little wooden propellers near the landing gear which would create this wailing sound in a dive. It was refereed to as the Jericho Trumpets and wasn't an essential part of the aircraft but instead fitted to demoralize the enemy, although apparently the pilots themselves found it very annoying. Hollywood tends to put this sound over any plane crash scenes, so now you know where it actually came from haha  
> \- Similarly, the air raid sirens were also purposely loud and built to instill fear so people were more likely to wake up and seek shelter. 
> 
> Also please leave comments or kudos if you have the time! It always makes my day knowing that people are reading this and enjoy it! :)


	4. Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning that this chapter is a bit more graphic than the others have been! Buckle-up because it's gonna be a ride from here on out

**January 1944**

Bill Guarnere left on a Wednesday. The day was bright and clear, the sun shining like a polished button. It was the first blue sky Eugene had seen in months. The snow glittered like it did on postcards, the air brisk and cold. The wind had Eugene and Babe pink cheeked in minutes, the two hung back in the crowd of pilots and well-wishers waving him away. Whatever goodbyes Bill and Babe had needed to say to one another had already been said. Babe’s face was clouded with a rolling thundercloud of emotions, and he was wound tighter than a spring. The sun made his hair glow like a flame. 

Eugene watched him watch Bill go. He didn’t move until the Jeep had crested the opposite hill, leaving nothing but stirred dust and an uneasy feeling rippling through those it had left behind. Babe’s hands were buried deep inside his pockets, his shoulders hunched and his collar flipped up against the wind. Wordlessly, Eugene turned and started down the path for a walk. It had become a routine. But Babe was burning his own bridges, the fuse inside him waiting to go off, and Eugene had taken it upon himself to try and calm him down. 

Babe didn’t speak for a long time. Minutes dragged themselves by and the contrails of the bombers were white streaks that painted the sky. Eugene let him stew while he himself fought the urge to reach for a cigarette. They pass the crater in the ground left by the crashed Stuka, only about a hundred yards west of the infirmary. Eugene didn’t look at it, but Babe did. He stared until Eugene jabbed an elbow into his gut and he looked away. 

Their reunion in the hallway sat uneasily in Eugene’s memory, the fear that had gripped both of them for the other knocked his feet out from under him. He didn’t know what to do with the protective awe that filled him every time he saw Babe, how his stomach lurched like he was on a rollercoaster. Everytime Babe came into the infirmary Eugene felt like he was glowing, lit from the inside out. 

Temptation wins out and he lights a cigarette, and as usual he hands one to Babe. He had removed the scarf from his hand and there was a huge scar through his palm. It looked like it’d been slashed with a knife, not a piece of glass. 

Babe picks at the cuffs of his jacket as they stepped further away from the crater that seemed more like a black hole dragging them back. He hands back the lighter. Eugene tucks it away. 

Another thread pops loose from his sleeve and Eugene snaps. “Quit thinking so loud. It’s making my head hurt.” 

“Can I still come see you?” He speaks in a rush, like he can’t get the words out fast enough. His accent comes out stronger, something that occured whenever he was nervous. 

He glances at Babe. His hair was like fire. “Why wouldn’t you come and see me?”

“Well, without Bill there I wasn’t sure I’d be allowed in. It’s one thing to visit a friend but to just hang around the infirmary is sort of weird, you know?” 

“You can still come.” Eugene exhales a cloud of smoke, a smile playing at his lips. “I ain’t gonna kick you out.” 

“Is Bill gonna be okay? I mean, what if his ship gets torpedoed?” 

“I thought the German Navy was done for.” Troop ships being torpedoed wasn’t unheard of, and it wasn’t something the Allies liked to broadcast, but Eugene knew it happened. “If it’s a red cross ship they won’t touch it.” 

Babe taps the ash off his cigarette. “I don’t know what sort of ship it is.” 

“You’ll just have to wait for a letter then.” Eugene says. He’ll miss Bill too. He always made Eugene laugh, and brought up the mood of the grim infirmary. He had a long, hard journey ahead of him, one that would involve months of PT and fitting. But there was something to be said for him being the toughest son of a gun Eugene knew. 

Babe nods to himself. “Yeah, guess so.” 

They walk a little longer before Babe throws his cigarette. “I’m so fucking sick of being cold. Of everyone leaving. We’re flying again tomorrow, and you know what they want us to do? They want us to go out ahead of the bombers and meet the Germans head on. Fucking suicide. Loading us up with bombs to drop on trains and tanks and whatever else we see fit.” 

There’s a bitterness to his voice that’s all raw edges and harsh announciations. He’d grown up on the sword’s edge of south Philly, and it had whittled him into a ??. Or maybe that was just nerves. Or the war. 

“Heffron-” 

“Jesus Christ, Gene!” He yells, stopping both of them. “I’ve told you my name, I thought we were past this!” 

His eyes narrow. “Don’t go yelling at me just because you’re mad Bill left. You knew this was coming.” 

“That ain’t why I’m mad!” 

“Then why are you mad?” 

“Because I was supposed to go with him!” Babe yells, his voice carrying over the snow. The admission hovers between them. Eugene frowns and takes another drag on his cigarette. 

“What do you mean you were supposed to go with him?” He isn’t even mad anymore. Just tired. 

“Because I’ve been here for a year and a half!” Babe explains, and he’s still shouting. Eugene doesn't think he realizes that. “They wanted to send me stateside, so I could train incoming pilots. It’s what they do with all their pilots after a certain point. But I told them no, and they let me stay.” 

“You’re telling me you had the chance to be  _ safe  _ and you  _ didn’t take it _ ?” Eugene runs a hand through his hair. He pulls the situation in every direction, stretches it like a puzzle to see if the picture would make itself apparent, but it doesn't. Why would he stay? 

“Yes!” 

“Jesus, Heffron! You a fucking lunatic?” No way he’d survive another three months. No man was that darn lucky. 

“I thought you’d be happy that I stayed!” He gestures wildly at the hangars and runways and vague direction of the infirmary. Like that means anything. 

“ _ Merde _ . Why would I be happy that you signed a death waiver?” 

“That ain’t what it is.” Babe hisses. 

“Might as well be.” Eugene picks up the lighter that had fallen out of his pocket. He points a finger at Babe’s chest. “You oughta know better than that.” 

He turns and walks back the way they came, biting back the urge to turn around. Babe walks the opposite way. Eugene feels like an idiot. His war wasn’t supposed to look this way. 

**Germany**

Without the bombers around them, the skies seemed marginally emptier. A mountain range of clouds reached beneath him. The occasional break in the clouds looked like a lake, or a window to another world. Flying did feel like another world, one where it was Babe and Babe alone. It was easy to forget his friends where in the planes beside him, easy to forget that across the world lay Philadelphia and a home and people he cared about, who depended on him. Babe found it half frightening at how easy it was to disconnect from all that. Some men’s vices were drinks, or smokes, and Babe did that too, but didn’t rely on them to take the edge off. For others it was women, but Babe’s had always been the sky. He wondered what that meant. 

Spiers starts to angle his plane below the clouds and Babe follows with the others, his heart spiking. The view in front of the glass goes white and hazy, like walking through a thick fog. It reminds him of the fog that will sit over the base in the morning, the sort that drains the color from the world like a leech and makes the sun look hazy and far away. 

Babe pulls back the throttle, his gaze glancing off the blue scarf he’d tied there. His stomach cramps. He can’t shake the way Eugene looked at him after he’d yelled, like Babe had gone and squashed a butterfly right in front of him. 

Eugene had yelled because he couldn’t believe he’d actually chosen to stay another three months, when he could be on a ship heading for New York with Bill right that moment. He could be safe. 

Babe tells himself he stayed because he knows he won’t find the high of combat anywhere else but here, that he didn’t want to say goodbye to  _ Doris  _ or Liebgott or Luz. He knew his time here wasn’t finished, that he’d get so restless back home he’d fly all the way across the Atlantic. He tells himself it’s that high, the adrenaline, the need for  _ more  _ that’s making him stay. 

While that isn’t a lie, he also knows the reason he stayed has a face and a name and hands that heal and warm blue eyes. 

A spray of bullets shakes the side of the plane, pelting her flank with bullet holes. He falls out from beneath the cloud, rolling just out of the way to avoid a Bf-109 screaming towards him. Babe curses, as around him the sky erupts with flak. Bf-109s and P-51s dive in and out of the clouds, both units scattering like flies and pairing off like dancers. 

Babe pushes the plane up, back through the clouds in an effort to lose the 109 on his tail. His stomach rolls like the sea, and he can’t see anything but clouds. Anything could be hiding behind them, or all around him. For all he knows, Hitler himself is behind the fog.

He breaks the surface of the clouds like a swimmer out of the water. Bullets tear the sky apart from behind him, rattling  _ Doris _ . The ends of the blue scarf shutters. 

Babe continues up as the blood leaves his head and a deep blakness edges on his vision. With a sharp breath it fades.

_ Doris _ , bless her soul, doesn't so much as struggle on the climb, and he’s pushing her so hard they’re nearly vertical and all there is blue sky. Behind him, the 109 gives a half-hearted attempt to follow, but he can’t climb like he can. The German is biding his time, giving himself energy during the merge, and even as Babe drops down like stone without a chute, the blood rushing in the opposite way, he knows he’s lost the merge. The 109 is still behind him, but Babe’s put a good enough distance between them that it won’t be a complete turkey shoot. 

Babe presses downward, the plane biting open the sky. His stomach bottoms out from him and the pressure pops like popcorn in his ears as the ground hurtles up to meet him. The German doesn't follow, doesn't risk overshooting. Babe pulls out, goes for a long u-turn over the snowy countryside at a speed that makes his head spin. His grip is so tight on the controls his hands and shoulders hurt. 

The 109 follows him into the hairpin turn. Trees and houses flick by like a motion picture, and Babe’s pressed tight against the side of the plane, his muscles strained and face tight. The German fires, but he aims too far ahead. Babe pulls out and up, and this time the 109 does follow, quick as a hawk. 

The next ten minutes become a horrible game of tag. Babe drags up and down, the engine roaring. They merge from one another like pages of a book, then find eachother again. Fire. Miss. Do it again. Babe keeps a careful distance between them, praying the German makes a mistake, that his engine stalls and Babe can get behind him, or gain altitude. But he’s fast and he’s smart and everything a German pilot should be. 

But Babe is good too. 

He takes a risk and goes low, tears pull at the corner of his eyes from the speed. He can make out the details on the Bavarian homes. Somewhere above him he hears the bite of engines. The bombers have arrived. 

The two planes are so close to the ground they stir up snow, making the tree branches shiver. He looks at the little blue scarf tied to the throttle. 

The 109 fires and this time, he doesn't miss. 

It feels like a baseball bat to the shoulder. The bullet tears the glass, stabs through layers of skin and blood and muscle. Babe loses his grip on the plane, and she wobbles like a top towards the ground. 

It’s a fraction of a second, a hitching breath. But later, much later, he’ll be asked how close he came to death and he’ll think of this second. They’ll ask him what he saw and Babe will tell them he saw God. 

Really though, he sees Eugene. 

Babe doesn't know who was looking over him, what God chose him. Or maybe God wasn’t part of it, maybe it was just silver luck, but some primal part of Babe shakes itself to life like a sleeping cat, because he grabs the stick and wrestles it up.  _ Doris  _ climbs into the sky and Babe’s world goes black. 

When he opens his eyes he’s still climbing, a pain like he’s never felt before is in his rupturing his right shoulder and his clothes stick to his skin with sweat and blood. When he looks back through the mirror there is a fire burning on the snow, the smashed Bf-109 crumpled like a k-ration tin. 

The 109 had not been able to pull up from the turn, or did so too fast and couldn’t beat gravity and it wrenched him to the ground. Babe shivers, he’d kissed death before, but never had he seen it like that, had it gripped him so acutely. 

Babe reconnects with the fighter group and he pulls off his goggles and blinks away the sun spots. He’s shivering like a hypothermic with adrenaline. He rubs his eyes, reaching for a place of calm. He remembers in pilot training when he was taught to find his happy place and ground himself. He pictures the ocean, choppy with foam. He rubs the scarf with his thumb and reminds himself to breathe. The voice in his head is Eugene’s. 

Within minutes his tears of pain are frozen to his face. He waits until they’ve passed by all the bombers and are well on their way home before he reaches for the first aid pouch clipped to his Mae West and tears it open with his good arm. The burn gloves and morphine syringes tumble down under the seat, but he manages to catch the gauze and burn jelly before it’s lost. Babe finds his knife and cuts the fabric of his jacket, uniform, and sweater while still flying the plane. His vision swims as he rips the gauze packet open with his teeth and shoves as much of it into the hole in his shoulder as he can. 

It doesn't bring the relief he was hoping it would, if anything he buried the bullet deeper, but at least he won’t be bleeding out all over  _ Doris _ . Martin would love to clean that up. 

It’s a two and a half hour flight back to England. He can confidently say it’s the longest two and a half hours of Babe’s life. He spends it fighting back nausea, and ignoring the searing pain. It’s like someone had fired a nail gun into him. He struggles to keep warm and conscious. He thinks about the morphine by his feet and occupied Europe below, the miles and miles between him and the ground. 

Babe is barely awake when the airfield appears on the horizon, the setting sun paints the sky gold and pink. The clouds are stretched like tightropes to the west. His breath comes in rapid and shallow lungfuls, and his head feels like it’s been pumped full of smoke. He hardly notices the plane land, only the way it jostles him and makes his shoulder sting like a bitch. 

Martin must have some sort of sixth sense. Babe’s barely parked the plane before Martin is climbing on the wing and frowning at the splintered canopy as Babe cranks it open. His vision swims like a fish. 

“Jesus Chirst, Babe. What happened to you?” Martin demands. Julian’s pale face appears over his shoulder. 

Babe fumbles with the safety belt at the same moment that Martin sees the gauze haphazardly stuffed into his shoulder like it’s a Thanksgiving turkey. He hisses. 

“We gotta get you out of here.” He leans over and detaches his mask from the oxygen and helps Babe unclip it. They push off the straps connecting him to the chair and chutes, Martin and Julian doing most of the work. “Do we need to call over a gurney?” 

“A gurney?” He mumbles. “It’s my shoulder not my legs.” 

“Yes but you’re in shock. Can you walk?” 

Babe frowns, his gaze on the dashboard like he isn’t sure how it got there. “It’s just my shoulder.” 

Martin looks at him like he’s finally dived off the deep end, before he takes Babe’s good arm and hauls him to his feet. He nearly falls over the side of the plane, but Martin and Julian both reach out and catch him. It jostles his shoulder, and then he really does black out. 

This time when he comes to he’s out of the plane and off the wing, standing on the freezing tarmac with about ten people around him. Martin is pushing past the clump of pilots and ground crews, and he thinks he hears Liebgott yelling and Joe Toye keeps asking what happened. Babe finds his legs, drags them to life and pushes Julian and Martin away. His mind is thick and syrupy like it’s full of cobwebs and his mouth tastes of cotton and blood. 

“It’s just my shoulder.” He repeats and the same moment the goddam gauze in his shoulder falls out in a bloody pile and then everyone really starts yelling because  _ Jesus Babe, save some blood for the rest of us. _

Then he’s in the infirmary, surrounded by the familiar scent of antiseptic and blood.  Renée is there, pushing back the men and helping Babe shrug out of his Mae West and ripped jacket. Her hands are a balm on his soul. 

“Where’s Gene?” He mutters. 

“What was that?” The edges of her words are decorated with concern, her face strained. “Babe?” 

“Gene?” 

“He’s on break.” She says gently. “Do you want someone to get him?”

Why wasn’t he here? It seemed like he should be here. Babe wanted him there. He nods. 

“Alright.” She turns towards Anna, one of the other nurses, and says something to her. They share a look more knowing and tender tha Babe has any right to witness, before Anna hurries off.

Babe was bare from the waist up, his uniform a bloody pile beside him. His chest hitches with every inhale. He watches the pilots and doctors hurrying about and swallows. His voice is breathless. “Can you find Eugene?” 

“He’ll be here soon,  _ oui? _ ” Renée opens a drawer, comes away with a morphine syrette that catches the light like a blade. She holds it out so he can see it. 

She plainly inquires, “Do you want it?” 

Babe blinks. He thinks of the syrettes rolling around the bottom of the cockpit like sand in a shaker. Why did he call for Eugene? Wasn’t he mad at him? 

“Babe?” She shakes the syrette. “I’m going to give you it, okay?” 

He blinks again. He wants to sleep. “Okay.” 

There is a faint pain on his opposite arm but it pales in comparison to the bullet in his shoulder, a bee sting beside a bullethole. 

She starts cleaning the wound, and it stings like fire and lemons for a handful of minutes that are tossed about like sand in an hourglass. The pain ebbs gradually, like the engine of a B-17 shutting down until it is gone like smoke in the wind. 

If Babe thought his head had been swimming before, it didn’t mean a thing compared to this. He was flouting, high and safe in a warm world, where the shouts of the hospital and the harsh lights became a daydream glow. 

Hands find him, warm and steady. They run over his back, his face, his sides, the planes of his face and the slope of his nose. The hands are foreighn, but Babe thinks they should be familiar, that he should know them as well as his own. 

“How much morphine you give him?” There’s a hint of panic in a voice that Babe has never heard be anything but calm. He reaches out feebly, seaking Eugene’s hands in an attempt to comfort him. 

“Babe?” Eugene’s face is pale. “How long you been bleeding?” 

He scrunches up his face, stares at Eugene’s coat like it’ll give him answers. Something pokes around inside his shoulder, brushes nerves and veins and blood. All he can think about is that there is something  _ inside his shoulder _ . 

“Babe? Did you hear me?” 

“It’s just my shoulder.” He mutters. “Ain’t my legs.” Babe wishes Eugene’s hands would stop shaking because he could feel every nerve ending the tweezers hit. He wishes he wasn’t so panicked and looking like his entire world had been blasted apart. 

Eugene’s voice is tight as a clamp, and his words aren’t slurred, but rather punched into the air like arrows. “How long ago were you shot?” 

He frowns. “Two hours? Three? Don’t recall.” 

“ _ Merde.  _ _ le voilà _ .” 

Relief slams through him so sharply he gasps. It’s a cool stream on a hot day, the omnipresent relief of realizing that he’d made it through another mission. 

Eugene holds up a bullet between the tongs of the tweezer. The crap of metal is half-crushed from the force of shattering through the window and his shoulder. Eugene looks at it like it’s the bane of his existence, before dropping the thing into a trashcan. 

Babe frowns. “Hey, I wanted to keep that.” 

Eugene gives him a look that can only be described as tired. “No you don’t.” 

“I coulda sent it home to my Ma, she would have showed it off to all the Irish grannies who live on our street.” He slurs. “Jesus, stop doing that!” 

“Sorry.” Eugene, pokes the tweezers a little further into the wound, checking to see if there was anything else the German left behind. 

“No you ain’t.” 

Eugene removes the tweezers and sets them aside. His hands are covered in blood, so much of it. They’re shaking, almost imperceptibly, and Babe can’t make sense of that through his morphine addled brain, but it doesn't seem like a doctor’s hands should shake. 

He pulls out a needle and thread. “I gotta stitch it up now, okay?” 

“Okay, Gene.” 

Babe watches the furrow between his eyes grow as Eugene carefully works the needle and thread, his left hand is gripping Babe’s bicep like a greenie grips his safety straps. Babe doesn't say anything about it, mostly because he sort of likes it being there. 

When it’s over, exhaustion pulls at Babe like gravity dragging him to earth. He fights tooth and nail to keep his eyes open as Eugene ties off the knot. They slip closed. It’s a new sort of tired, the hazy sort that comes with drugs, where the world feels fake as summer snow. 

Eugene shakes Babe’s other shoulder, his voice onerous. “Hey, don’t go falling asleep on me.” 

Babe hums in his throat, leans into Eugene’s hand. 

His tone is tight with panic again. “C’mon, open your eyes. For me.” 

It takes a momentous effort for him to drag his eyelids open. But he does it. For Gene. 

“Sorry.” Babe slurs. 

Eugene ties a bandage around his shoulder to keep the stitches in place. “Why are you sorry?” 

Evidently, morphine made him honest. “For scaring you.” 

Eugene searches his gaze, his eyes soft at the corners. The colors from the sunset wash his face in pink and gold, and a sort of sad, half-smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. 

“It’s alright. You’re alright.” 

Babe blinks and grins back. “Can I sleep now?” 

It earns him a half-hearted laugh, and Babe sort of wants to kiss him but there’s at least ten people around them. His heart aches. The hand on his shoulder tightens. “Yes, you can sleep now.” 

It takes a long time before Eugene can bring himself to leave Babe. He can’t say how long he sits in the chair beside his bed, biting back the urge to hold his hand, but by the time he does move the blackout curtains have been yanked down, the planes are all off the tarmacs, and the infirmary has quieted. Spina and  Renée both leave him alone, although he doesn't miss the concerned glances they spare him each time they pass by. 

Before he leaves he checks that Babe’s head and feet are elevated, and that there isn’t a risk of him rolling over onto his injured shoulder. His face is pale as the clouds on an English morning, making his freckles stand out. His red hair is fanned out across the pillow, damp with sweat. His ruined uniform is folded neatly beside his head. 

Eugene is infirutated that he is here at all, that he decided to stay for some godforsaken reason. Of course he’d go and get himself shot the day after he could have gone home. Of course. Eugene wants to go all the way up to General Doolittle and ask him what the hell he was thinking, sending the fighters alone over the beating heart of Germany. 

He goes outside and lights a cigarette, the winter chill doing little to dampen his growing temper. Eugene ends up pacing the concrete walk that wraps around the infirmary, wearing holes into the ground and chain smoking. From above there is the growl of the British bombers, heading Eastwards. 

He wishes Babe were gone at the same moment that he wishes he was with him then, that they were on another one of their walks and staring up at the stars and the crescent moon. 

Eugene had been up in his room, scribbling away at paperwork while the radio sang. The room was cold, the light fading with the sun. Then Anna had gone and knocked on the door and ripped out the ground from his feet. The would had ground to a halt, and then began again with too much color and sensation. It had been like the raid except worse. If he’d been standing up he would have keeled over. 

Eugene releases a puff of smoke and wonders not for the first time, what on earth he was doing. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever been in love, he’d only ever felt a sort of fond curiosity. Now he was beginning to grasp what the shape of love might be, and it wasn’t a heaviness he carried on his shoulders, but rather a peculiar sort of warmth that was like looking at the stars on a summer night. There was an absurdity to it- to love and war and Edward Heffron; because no matter which way you stretched it Eugene was a goddamn fool. 

Babe curses at the sting that blooms from his cheek. He pulls the blade away, watches the blood well. His face and neck are dotted with little cuts. The cloth towel he’d been using for the better part of two years was stippled with red. He would have to go find himself another one. 

Babe throws the blade into the sink with a grunted curse. What was he, a goddam teenager? 

The door to the bathroom opens with a creek and Babe jolts, but the harsh lights do nothing to help the bags under Eugene’s eyes. 

His gaze widens with concern at the blood before they flick up and down his face and understanding dawns like the sun, and then Eugene is holding back laughter. His eyes crinkle with it, and it erases the lines of exhaustion from his face as if he’d drank from the fountain of youth. 

“It ain’t funny, Gene.” He groans. “I’m handicapped!” 

It’d been about two days since the “accident” as Eugene referred to it, and Babe’s right arm was strung up in a sling to keep the pressure off his shoulder. This left him with his left arm, which, up until this point in his life, had been nearly useless. 

“You ain’t handicapped.” Eugene laughs. “Just a dolt.” 

Babe gasps in mock horror. “You an ableist now? An ableist doctor?”

“Don’t joke about that.” Eugene walks over and assesses the scene; the blood, the blade, the towel- it looks like a scene from _Murders in the Rue Morgue_. Eugene was likely tired of seeing Babe’s blood. 

“Do you need a hand?” Eugene asks, looks between him and the sink. His expression is somewhere between horrified and humorous. 

“Jesus, I ain’t a teenager.” He picks the blade up from the sink and washes it clean before trying again. He starts just under the newest cut, and through the mirror he can see Eugene looking at him and he shivers. He cuts himself again. 

Eugene hisses and presses two fingers to the spot, a knee-jerk reaction. Babe stares at him through the mirror because he’s sort of metrical like that. Eugene takes the blade from his hands.

“Turn this way, you’re gonna slit your throat at that rate.” 

H e and Eugene are nearly the same height, which means there’s nowhere to look but Eugene. He meticulously drags the blade down Babe’s cheek and leaves smooth skin in the blade’s wake. Babe reminds his heart to beat, his lungs to breathe. Eugene won’t meet his eyes, they’re trained on his cheek and chin and neck and everywhere but his eyes. He thinks of how easy it would be to reach out and take his hand, and the yearning hits him point blank between the eyes. 

“Look up.” Eugene mumbles. 

He’s careful along the stretch of Babe’s throat and turns the blade gently along the shape of his Adam's apple. It’s more intimate than Babe had anticipated, and he starts fiddling with his sling. He looks down the long line of sinks and urinals, ordered like soldiers in a parade. There’s a large window at the end of the line, and from this side of the base all Babe can see is the brown countryside that rolls on in the same infinity as the sea. 

Babe is half terrified of the amount of trust he’s given Eugene in this moment. Any of the other guys and he’d be worried they’d slit his throat as a prank, but there’s none of that fear with Eugene. 

Minutes pass. His fiddling gets worse.

“Have you ever gone to the hospital, Gene?” 

He rinses off the blade in the sink and dunks it in the thin soapy liquid at the bottom. “No.” 

Babe frowns. “Never?” 

“Never.” Eugene presses his knuckles to his cheek and Babe turns his head. “We always went to my grandmere.” 

“Oh yeah.” Babe remembers. “You ever been real hurt? I ain’t even broken a bone. I guess when I get hurt I gotta go the whole nine yards to make up for it.” 

Eugene hums as he shaves the corner of Babe’s jaw. “I got my arm ripped up in a crab trap once.” 

“You’re kidding!” 

“Swear I ain’t. My grandmere just about had a heart attack.” 

A moment passes. Babe’s neck is clean. “I’m tired, Gene.” 

Eugene nods. Babe wants to see Eugene away from all this, away from the war and the ache and the constant fear that ran like the blood in their veins. He wants to see Eugene in Louisiana, and in Philadelphia and everywhere in between. He thinks of the bombed cities he’s passed over, the graveyards and the fields and how for once he was part of something bigger than himself. He thinks of all the capabilities of the human hand. 

Silently, Eugene works through Babe’s other cheek and then turns his chin so that he’s facing forward, and that’s when their eyes lock. 

Eugene’s thumb is just under his lips and Babe feels every point of contact straight to his bones. Everything that needs to be said is in Eugene’s eyes. 

Babe forgets how to breathe, forgets what he’s doing until the ghost of a name rises unbidden on his tongue. “Eugene.” 

Eugene shakes himself and looks away. “Sorry.” 

Babe’s breath hitches when Eugene looks back at him. 

“Don’t be sorry.” Babe says.

Eugene seems to wait for him to say more, but he doesn't, so with a deep breath he goes to work on the little hairs above his lips. He keeps his eyes sternly there, works the blade over the philtrum. Babe remembers that word from school, but mostly he remembers it because the Greek word meant “love charm”. Ain’t that just something. 

Babe reaches out just as Eugene is finishing, and with the only hand he has, he touches the one Eugene has on Babe’s cheek. Babe’s hands are shivering but there’s no cold to blame it on, and the color is high on his cheeks. Eugene’s eyes flicker to his lips and Babe is convinced he’s going to melt into a puddle or collapse right there on the tiled floor. 

The bathroom door jumps open, and they spring apart like the other is made of flame. Babe fights to control his breath as a patient stumbles in, barely sparing them a look in his haste to reach a toilet. He sees Eugene grimace. “I should go check in on him.” 

He can’t look at Babe while Babe can’t tear his eyes away. Eugene hurries to help the patient, his professionalism and caring tendency winning out over whatever the hell had just happened. Babe swallows and grabs the blade from the rim of the sink and pulls the plug off from the drain. He hurries out before Eugene can catch up with him. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really have any historical notes for this chapter, I think I talked about the "fighter sweep" earlier on. Thank you so much for reading and don't forget to comment or leave kudos. My Tumblr is @ peachycompany if you want to say hello over there!


	5. Tu es Partout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for f-slur, it's only mentioned and not explicitly stated.

They were on the precipice between January and February, and the nights were long and the days short. The south of England provides only a handful of chilled sunlight, and Eugene was inclined to seek it on the rare occasions that it was proffered. 

He sat outside, smoking a cigarette on a bench that faced the fields. The old cow was back, chewing grass on the lip of an opposite hill. The cow nosed away the snow to get to the dried turf beneath, and it ate slowly, in no rush to find more or be somewhere else. Beyond the cow and her hill there was a great pile of building clouds, stacked atop one another like a column of broken dreams. Their bellies were a deep and angry grey, their tops a snowy white. The sky above Eugene was spotless and blue and the sun burned. 

The letter in his pocket is heavy as a stone. Eugene came out here to think up a response, or at least to have a moment to sort out his thoughts, but suddenly all he can think about is the blue sky. The blue above England isn’t the same as the sky above Louisiana. Eugene thinks he can blame the war, or the planes that fill it, but in England the sun does too little and in Louisiana it does too much. 

Eugene doesn't miss the muggy and oppressive heat of the bayou. Doesn't miss Bayou water so dark it looked as if it had swallowed the light of day in it’s muddy throat. The Spanish moss hung low from the cypress trees, dragging and clumping like spiderwebs in the water. He recalls sitting on his Grandmere’s porch all morning to watch the sun rise and the world wake, and if he was lucky he would catch a glimpse of a heron. Everything about Bayou Chene had been sleepy, the water in no hurry to get anywhere as it dragged itself between the knobbly knees of the cypress. 

Sometimes he reckons that he even misses it. Then he thinks of the eyes, and the words that were really only one word that began with an f and finished with a t. He thinks of his grandmere’s sad eyes and the way she knew what was going to happen before things did, and the way she knew what Eugene was feeling even when he was miles away. 

She claimed she knew that he had met someone, that he’d gotten his fool heart all twisted up in another person’s. She said that he should go home and that bad things were coming. 

He exhales a cloud of smoke, his eyebrows drawn and his face tight. His shoulders are slumped downwards in the same way other’s raise theirs when they are anxious. A single P-40 dives in and out of the stack of clouds like a metallic bird. Eugene watches it knife open the great stacks of water vapor and disappear inside them a moment later. It reminds him of the frogs and fish he and Merriel used to chase, Eugene had always been fascinated when they plunged beneath the water, into a world where he could not follow. From his spot on the bench, the plane seems a million miles up. 

A set of footsteps stops just behind him and Eugene sort of wants to smile. “Can I bum a smoke?” 

Wordlessly he hands the light and pack over as Babe sits beside him. When he hands the light and pack back over Eugene stubs out the smoke in his mouth and lights another. 

He risks a glance at Babe. His neck is exposed as he tilts his head back to marvel at the plane. The color had returned to his cheeks since the injury, and he’d been back in the sky for about a week. His arm was out of the sling, and beside Eugene he came awake like the world did in Spring. Babe’s gaze was a mess of wonder and longing as he watched the plane. Eugene is so caught up in looking at him that he doesn't realize when Babe stops looking at the plane and starts looking at him. 

Eugene searches his gaze. Babe is looking at him the same way he was looking at the plane and Eugene doesn't know what to do with that. His heart stutters and he looks back at the sky. 

The P-40 crawls up into the sky, corkscrewing like a spinning top into the clouds. Eugene’s frown deepens. “How do you do it?” 

Babe's eyebrows crease as his gaze jumps between Eugene and the plane. “Do what?” 

Eugene cocks his head at the plane as it appears again above the cloud pile. “Fly that high.” 

“That ain’t even that high.” Babe laughs around his cigarette. “That fella is just showing off. It’d be real nice just to mess around like that, but we don’t got the fuel to spare for everyone to go around doing that.” 

“Is it scary?” Eugene exhales a plume of smoke. 

Babe shrugs. “Can be. That though? That up there? That’s just fun. Gets the blood going.” He laughs again and glances at Eugene’s lap. “What’s that? Letter from home?” 

Eugene looks down. At some point in all his musing he’d taken out the letter from his Grandmere. Embarrassed, he stuffs it back in his pocket. “Something like that.” 

“Bad news?” 

He shakes his head. “Just like thinking too much. It runs in the family.” 

“Do you miss home?” Babe watches the plane dive. “I think I miss it, but I can’t really see myself going back.” 

He thinks of still water and egrets and cooking crawdads and a six letter word. “Can’t really see myself going back either, wasn’t exactly popular.” 

“Why? You kill somebody?” Babe jokes, his smile faltering at Eugene’s glare. “Jesus, really?” 

He inhales on his cigarette, lets the smoke swirl around in his lungs before letting it back out. “Got caught rubbing necks with a boy from a town over. Nobody really wanted me back after that.” 

He’s glad it’s out, but his hand is shaking around the cigarette and hard as he tries he can’t move his head to see how Babe is looking at him. The silence stretches like a rubber band, the words sitting like a grenade between them. 

Babe takes in a deep breath. “I’m sorry that happened.” 

He nods. “Ain’t your fault.” 

They’re quiet again before Babe speaks. “I- I don’t know if I, you know could. I think maybe I want to.” 

This time Eugene does stare at him, and it’s Babe’s turn to watch the sky. Eugene repeats his words, “You want to.” 

“Well, I’ve thought about it.” His leg bounces with nerves. Eugene’s heart is going faster than the P-40. The plane comes screaming over them, roaring like a million automobiles and lifting the hair of their heads and ruffling the grass beneath the snow and the naked tree branches. The cow lifts her head. 

“That was fast.” Eugene says as the plane disappears. 

Babe nods. “Sure was.” 

**February 1944**

One of the perks of being a doctor was that Eugene actually had his own office. It was small, with a single window cut into the wall with barely enough room for a desk and chair, much less the bookshelf that was stuffed with medical textbooks that kept the door from being opened fully. Eugene didn’t spend much time in there unless he truly wanted to be alone or he actually had a mountain of paperwork that needed doing. Which was where he found himself now, surrounded by piles of medical records and reports and transfer requests he needed to sign. The only light was a desk lamp, and it’s warm glow threw dramatic shadows over the walls and floor. Eugene had dragged the radio down from his and Spina’s room because he couldn’t stand working in silence. The little machine sat on the lip of a bookshelf, Vera Lynn’s  _ We’ll Meet Again  _ humming pleasantly. 

Outside the sky was bleeding from day to night, the clouds the color of a dark bruise and the first stars just beginning to make an appearance. Eugene was so absorbed in his work that he forgot all about pulling down the blackout curtain, and he certainly didn’t hear the footsteps hurrying down the hall until the door was thrown open, smacking against the bookshelf and causing a copy of  _ Aequanimitas  _ to tumble onto the floor. 

“Do you know how long I been looking for you?” Babe doesn't even notice the mess he’s caused. “Practically turned the whole base upside down. I’ve known you for months and not once did you mention you had an  _ office _ ?” He says the word like it’s some sort of curse, like wealth or a mistress on the side. 

“I hardly use it.” He says. They haven’t really talked about their conversation from two weeks before, and Eugene isn’t exactly inclined to bring it up. Regardless, it crosses his mind everytime he sees Babe, which seems to be less and less often. “Didn’t think it important.” 

Babe closes the door with a lot more care than he opened it. He bends down to pick up the book on the floor, frowning at the title. “Bit of light reading, huh?” 

“It’s Latin, it means equanimity.” He explains as he signs his name. Babe just looks at him. “Calmness, self-composure. That sort of thing.” 

Babe flips through it and smiles. “Is it a self-help book? Didn’t take you for the type.” 

“No.” Eugene snorts. “It’s an old medical essay about being a good physician, put it back.” 

“So it is a self-help book!” Babe laughs and flips to the front cover and reads, “‘I say: Fear not, life still leaves human effort scope. But, since life teems with ill, nurse so extravagant hope; because thou must not dream, thou need’st not despair.’ That’s heavy stuff for a swamp kid.” 

Anybody else and Eugene would have hit him upside the head. Instead he just laughs fondly as Babe returns the book. 

Eugene stands and leans against the desk. “Why’d you come looking for me, anyways?” 

“Am I not allowed to see you?” Babe’s joking, but there’s an edge to his words, like he’s withholding information he doesn't want to disclose. Babe leans back against the windowsill and starts tapping his foot because his energy needs somewhere to go. 

Eugene just nods at his shoulder. “How’s it healing up?” 

“You look at it every other day. Gene. You probably know better than me.” He points out. Babe glances at the radio like he’s only just seen it and his eyes light up with recognition. “Hey, I know this song!” 

Eugene smiles as Babe turns it up and the last drags of light are stolen from the sky. Eugene pulls down the black-out curtain and when he turns around Babe is holding out his hand like he fancies himself a proper gentleman, with a smile that sort of takes the breath from his throat. 

He raises his brows. “You asking me to dance, Heffron?” 

Babe snorts but pushes his hand closer. “Something like that.” 

Eugene looks at his hand, it’s full of calluses with fingers like pianist’s. Babe is grinning, his hair like fire in the dim light. He’s gangly and awkward, but there’s that knife-edge of Philly under it all, the desire to be something more, the gusto of a pilot, and something Eugene would nearly call longing. He has a faint idea as to the reason why Babe came rushing in like he’d seen a ghost, and the thought crosses his mind that war is no place for this. 

He takes his hand anyways. 

They don’t speak, don’t even really dance. They’re both resting their heads on the others shoulders, and Babe smells of army soap and leather and Eugene smells of antiseptic, the room heady with dust. They pull each other close, practically crushing one another until there’s not a place where one begins and the other ends. Babe is warm and stable and he clutches Eugene like he’s going to fade into smoke. 

Eugene is careful of Babe’s shoulder as they sway. There’s nothing to be said, and the song doesn't call for any sort of Lindy Hop or Jitterbug. Neither has it in him, and there’s that heavy feeling of ‘goodbye’ hanging in the air, the premonition of the coming tragedy whispering in their ears. Eugene pulls him closer and Babe sighs against him, the tense grip he keeps on everything loosening as he goes boneless in Eugene’s arms. 

“I’m real sorry, Gene.”

Eugene cards his fingers through his hair as the song tapers off. There’s a pause, the crackle of static before the gentle chords of an Edith Piaf song fills the room. Eugene sighs at the french and mutters, “Don’t be sorry.” 

“I’m going, though.” He says. “All week, raid after raid. They said as many as three a day.” 

Eugene pulls back to look at Babe. His face is red, and his expression severs a piece of Eugene’s heart, and all he can think is that he has to get it off. Babe is looking at him as if he’d hung the moon and all her stars. Babe’s hand drifts to his cheek and Eugene leans into it, stares back with a somber longing and he hears Babe’s breath catch and that’s when he pushes forward. 

Really, they both push forward at the same time, meeting one another halfway with an effortlessness that can only come from years of domesticity. They’re the shore and the sea, the sun and the moon and two magnets finding each other. Eugene’s mind is blown into a million pieces. 

Babe pulls back and they’re both high on the feeling of not having to think so hard. They come together, a little deeper this time, pull apart then find eachother again. Each kiss is more chasmic than the last. They both shiver with the light touches, the radical feelings and it’s too much because Babe could be dead anyday, bleeding between Eugene’s fingers. Or maybe they won’t even get that much. 

When they find eachother again, it’s like waves crashing on the shore and they’re both dragging the other closer. Eugene licks along the edge of Babe’s mouth and he parts them instivley. Eugene can’t think, can’t process when he presses his tongue like he isn’t sure he’s doing it right. If he boils it down he didn’t think he’d ever find something like this, that God would ever give him this chance. He doesn't know what two queers on opposite ends of the country can have but a pipe dream, a romance of knuckle-brushes and gazes held too long, coming together like this, only in the dark corners of the earth that will have them.

The kiss is warm and wet where everything else has always been cold. Babe hums with relief and Eugene melts. How he’d gone this long without this, without Babe in his arms is beyond him. They fit together like there’d never been a space between them. There’s a panicked desperation under the surface and it crashes over them. When Eugene pulls away for a breath, Babe pulls him right back with a gasp of Gene’s name that goes straight to his toes. 

His thoughts taper off and sweeten, until it’s just feeling and the war and the sound of engines slides from his subconscious. Edith Piaf’s French is still crackling over the radio, wrapping them in a blanket of placeboed safety. 

When they stop it’s slow and unhurried, Eugene pressing his lips to any part of Babe he can reach, his cheeks and nose and neck. Babe grins breathlessly, his eyes bright with life despite the exhaustion that surrounds them. Eugene glows because he put that look there. 

Babe ducks his head into Eugene’s shoulder. He panics until realizes that Babe’s laughing, not crying and then Eugene starts laughing too. They laugh into each other's shoulders at the absurdity of whatever it is they’re doing. Maybe they’re not laughing at anything, but there’s so much happiness within them that it needs somewhere to go. 

**Big Week**

The kiss leaves Babe’s mind a puddle for days. Nothing really captures his attention, not the briefings that Colonel Sink gives before the flight, or his dehydrated eggs and milk, or Liebgott’s banter. Everytime his mind wonders it offers him Eugene’s sort of sad and hopeless smile, which isn’t very nice of God because Babe needs to  _ focus _ . 

He shakes his head out of the clouds before Martin can smack him. The ground crews are doing their last adjustments, checking the flaps and rudders, hooking up drop tanks, feeding the guns with ammo, checking the landing gear. There’s a lot to do before a flight, and most of the pilots are still inside eating. He’s grateful for what Martin and Julian and all the others do for him, they’re probably one of the only reasons he’s still alive. 

Babe takes a seat on the wing, kicking his legs like a toddler on a swing set. He’s cradling a cup of coffee, watching the sunrise glint off the silver metal of the planes that are lined up like horses before a race. 

Martin frowns at him. “Did you eat?” 

“Yes.” He lies. Despite his mind still being a puddle of goo from the kiss, his stomach was twisting itself up in knots like a sailor’s rope. His hands were jittery, and the watered-down coffee probably wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had. 

Martin gives him one of his infamous bitch glares, but there isn’t the same heat behind it as there usually is. Maybe he’s tired, or he’s giving Babe a break for the week. God knows he could need it, flying at least two missions a day over Germany wasn’t easy on anybody. His entire career in the USAAF had been building to this week, and in two weeks he’d be back in the states, safe as a penny in a pocket. Going back to the states meant leaving the guys, and it meant leaving Eugene. His gut twists at the thought of him being safe and Eugene still being here, an ocean away with the daily threat of German bombs. Maybe what scared him more was that he knew Eugene was slowly coming undone like the thread of a sock. Babe’s shoulder injury had shocked him, more than he’d been willing to let on. He recalls how his hands shook as he dug out the bullet, hands that were normally steady as stone. Eugene’s blue eyes had been wide, a flavor of panic that hadn’t been there for any other patient. 

The wound had been minor, all things considered. No arteries were cut and the bullet had only gone in a couple inches, but Babe had seen how frightened Eugene had looked and the way he carried himself afterwards was like he’d been stepping on thin ice. Babe didn’t know the first thing about being cared for, about someone being constantly frightened for him. It was almost as scary as being shot at. He picks at the threads of his uniform as an icy wind whips over the runway. The sky is dark with a storm, the takeoffs today won’t be easy. 

“Hey Babe.” Julian says, poking his face out from under the plane, his hands smeared with grease and oil. “That doctor you’re always with is here.” 

He frowns. “Gene?” 

“If that’s his name then yeah.” Julian shrugs before he disappears back under the plane. What on earth could Eugene be doing here? Coming to see Babe before a mission wasn’t exactly something they did. He climbs over the cockpit and onto the opposite wing just as Eugene walks up. He’s smoking a cigarette just like he always is, a warmer jacket thrown over his medical coat. His hair is windswept and the bags under his eyes bring out the blue in them. Babe beams as he stands on the wing, looking down at Eugene who looks back up with the barest smile. 

“Whatcha doing out here, Gene?” 

Eugene looks over  _ Doris _ with his brows raised as he releases a lungful of smoke with a shrug. “Thought I’d come check on your shoulder before you beat it up for the week.” 

“My shoulder’s fi-” He cuts himself off at Eugene’s glare and quickly changes course. “Yeah, alright. Let’s go.” 

Eugene pulls him off behind the hangar, which does not provide much privacy but it’s better than being out in the open. Babe’s heart is going a million miles in his chest and he’s sort of giddy with it. He’s smiling, but then Eugene actually pushes his jacket and uniform aside to look at his stitches. His hands are cold where he pokes at them, watching Babe’s face for a grimace. 

“You know your work is good, Gene. You don’t gotta check ‘em so much.” 

He shakes his head. “It ain’t my best. See this,” he rubs a small knot in the middle where the scar is more visible, the stitches a bit loose. “Messed up cause my hands were shivering like a cicada’s wing. Gonna make the scar more noticeable.” 

The wind bites into his exposed skin and he pulls the sleeve of his sweater back on before buttoning up his uniform over it. “It looks fine. You’re too harsh on yourself.” 

Eugene purses his lips. “Don’t want it coming loose when you’re flying.” 

“Christ, it’s been  _ weeks _ .” He buttons up his collar. “If they didn’t come out in that dogfight last week then they ain’t coming out at all.” 

“Gotta be sure, Babe.” Eugene says as Babe pulls on his A-10 with the new medical packet secured on it’s waist. “Where ya going today?” 

“Wish I could tell you.” Babe admits, zipping it up. “Top secret.”

Eugene rolls his eyes but does not press the issue. “Your plane’s bigger than I thought.” 

Babe’s eyes light up. He could talk about  _ Doris  _ for hours. “She’s real swell, huh? Reliable as hell, would’ve been squashed like a bug months ago if it wasn’t for her.” 

Eugene glances back in the direction of the planes. Julian had once told Babe that Eugene frightened him. When Babe asked why he’d said, “Don’t know. He’s just got those big ol bug eyes that kinda go straight to your soul, and he’s always so intense. My Ma always told me not to trust the quiet types. Says they’re smarter than they got any right to be.” 

Babe didn’t know what he meant by all that, because to Babe Eugene would always just be Eugene. Wonderful, intense Eugene. Now he sort of gets it, in the way he’s looking at him right before he kisses him. 

Babe’s head swims, he’d been so scared that the frantic make-out session had only been a result of some desperate stress-filled longing, that it hadn’t meant anything despite the way they’d both had wet eyes by the end and the way they’d been sort of crushing one another in their haste. He didn’t think he’d wanted anything from Eugene, and then he’d given him everything and nothing else had mattered. 

That edge of panic is in the kiss, short and brief as it is. There’s a safety in it, a comfort Babe wants to cling to when the uncertainty of life and death lie on every corner for them. But the war is in this kiss, and the warmth that had been present in the office has faded into cold strain. 

Babe pulls back and hisses, “Someone could see.” His eyes dart nervously around, but there’s nobody there to see. 

Eugene doesn't look around for prying eyes, he’s only looking at Babe. Babe steps back a respectable distance, Eugene’s reflections shining in the goggles perched over his helmet. There’s a lot in that gaze, and even though they’d had each other's tongues down their throats, Babe isn’t really ready to unpack it. He glances around again before he grabs Eugene’s hands. “Look, we’ll talk about it after, yeah? I promise we will.” From the other side of the hangar there’s the sounds of the first engines starting, the pilots clambering around. Babe spares a glance at his watch, they’d have to hurry if they wanted to catch up with the bombers then get ahead. “I gotta go, Gene. We’ll talk after, promise.” 

He pulls away but just before their hands slip apart and Eugene asks, “You still got that scarf?” 

“Sure do. Tied right to the throttle.” 

It gives Eugene enough reinsurance to let their hands drop after Babe gives it one more tight squeeze, before he’s off, running towards the waiting planes and beyond them, Germany. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Notes:   
> -"Big Week" or Operation Argument was the biggest air battle of the European war. Lasting from February 20th-25th 1944, Allied bombers attacked German industry centers day and night hoping to lure out the Luftwaffe for a final and decisive battle, this was a crucial step in preparations for D-Day and largely goes overlooked. Up until that point bombers did everything they could to avoid conflict with the Luftwaffe, now they were purposely luring them out. By the end of the week the allies had flown 6,000 sorties and lost about 2,000 men, much higher than any German casualties. Regardless, it raised allied morale signifcatly and ultimately resulted in the Germans suspending aircraft production, and most German fighters were pulled back from occupied territory and into Germany.   
> \- The songs mentioned are We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn and Tu es Partout by Edith Piaf (definitely look up the English lyrics for the second one, it's very sweet)
> 
> Sorry this chapter is a bit shorter and poorly edited, I had a hard time writing it and sort of just wanted to be done with it haha. At least they finally got their ducks in a line and got together.


	6. The End of Everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't really edit this so please be patient haha
> 
> ALSO- this fic now has a playlist on Spotify! The playlist name is comin in on a wing and a prayer, and here's a link: HTTP://open.spotify.com/playlist/6q9CJHALAiFnedBkWBunZ0?si=CBkem3x1QtGayyY5zr6ZTA just in case you wanna listen to the songs I mention :)

It was getting late when the pilots finally came back, the sun dipped low behind the clouds. The runway had been covered with fresh snow, and the day had been filled with the sounds of the ground crews working tirelessly to keep the tarmac clear. Eugene worked just as hard to keep Babe out of his mind, and he didn’t do too well at it. 

Eugene’s hands were red when he finally heard the engines, fighting their way home in the growing darkness. The fighters came in on their last dregs, pulling on scraps of fuel and landing in bullet-riddled planes with cracked cockpits and bleeding wounds. Eugene watches them through the window, but in the darkness, he can’t pick out  _ Doris  _ amongst the others. Every day he watches the planes land, and every day he was terrified that one of them wasn’t gonna be Babe’s. Fear crawled it’s way into his throat, coming over him like a drowning man. He should be able to recognize it, should be able to recognize Babe’s lanky silhouette, but none of them fit. 

Renée’s hand closes over his shoulder. Her hands remind him of his Grandmere’s. She probably wouldn’t appreciate being told this, but the calming balm that his Grandmere’s touch provided is in her hands too. It’s enough to pull him back from the window as she mutters, “They are injured, you have to help.” just as the first pilots are coming in, clutching bleeding wounds. 

Eugene shakes off the worry, although he’s always worn perturbation like a coat. He grabs Liebgott as he comes in, his face a mess of shallow cuts. He steers him towards an empty chair as he asks, “What happened?” 

“Too many goddam Nazi fucks.” Liebgott yanks off his helmet, tossing it to the ground and the goggles splinter against the linoleum. “The brass wanted us to lure them out and they got exactly what they wanted. We’re all fucking cannon fodder to them, like going into a lion’s den or some shit. Ate us alive.” 

Eugene dips a cloth into antiseptic and starts wiping at the cuts. “I meant your face.” 

“Flak blew apart the canopy, Doc. Like snow or some shit. Cut me up all nice.” Liebgott explains and Eugene curses in French before he finds the tweezers, he could have been pushing the glass deeper. 

He wants to ask about Babe. The question burns the tip of his tongue like a stovetop but he bites back the words before they tumble out. “You want any pain killers?”

Liebgott snorts, gesturing at his face. “For this? Nah Doc, barely feel it. Is that bad?” 

“Your adrenaline levels are probably still high.” He explains, picking out a piece of glass and dropping it into a tin. “You're lucky you wore your goggles, could have cut up your eyes.” 

Liebgott kicks at his helmet lying on the floor. “Piece of shit.” 

They’re both silent until Eugene is confident he’s worked out all the glass shards. He bandages the worst cuts, but most of them are shallow and have already stopped bleeding. Liebgott is looking across the infirmary with that thousand-yard stare that Eugene’s seen too many times. There’s a wave of anger under it, boiling like a pot of water, and it’s this which makes him ask, “Did you lose anyone?” There’s an edge of nervousness in his voice, a cold-panic, and he thinks he already knows what Liebgott is going to say even before he clears his gaze and looks at Eugene with a stare that says everything he needs to know. 

“Seven bombers, that’s seventy men right there- and four fighters.” 

Eugene plasters the last deep cut. “Who?” 

“Muck and Penkala, and well, nobody knows where Babe is.” 

Eugene isn’t sure how he doesn't collapse, because his legs go sort of boneless and turn themselves to grits. There’s an image of a burning plane falling like a comet towards the ground, flames licking up Babe’s arms, and Eugene pushes the vision violently from his mind before he can hear the screams. He presses on the plaster, makes sure it’s on tight, and says, “You’re all good now. Come back if there’s a piece of glass I missed, I don’t want you trying to get rid of it yourself.” 

Liebgott studies him, the red-hot fury still bubbling just beneath the surface of his skin. Here was a man that burned a few degrees hotter than the rest of them, but the anger isn’t directed towards Eugene but some greater force that was playing with all their lives like puppets at the end of strings.

“You good Doc? You don’t look so well.” 

“Just tired.” Eugene rubs a hand down his face. “Let me know if they find out anything about Heffron.” 

Liebgott promises, and Eugene moves through the next hour on autopilot. He ties slings and bandages, administers morphine, extracts bullets and shards of flak, things he could do in his sleep. All the while he carefully keeps his mind away from a particularly bright smile and flaming hair. Eugene listens for the sound of a lone engine, even after the blackout curtains are pulled down and the men with less serious injuries leave. The moon is high in the sky, occasionally poking from the clouds when it isn’t blotted out by the British bombers leaving for the night raid. 

The infirmary quiets and eventually stills. Dr. Robinson is passed out in a chair with blood on his scrubs, and the nurses all look as though they’d seen a ghost. 

“Seventy-four men in a day?” A nurse hisses, and another adds, “It’s suicide, what they’re doing. I ought to go up to Doolittle myself and file a complaint.” 

Eugene doesn't leave until he’s certain the patients are comfortable until the tightness working itself up his throat is too much and he’s ready to burst with it. He thinks of the anger that flowed in Liebgott, humming like the electricity poles that never made it to Bayou Chene. Back home, Eugene would disappear into the swamp for hours, occasionally days, and Merriell was the only person able to find him. 

There’s no swamp for him to hide in here, no place for him to go beside the little closet of a room upstairs with a sliver of a window. The clouds cover the moon, and Eugene doesn't bother opening the window or closing the blackout curtains. The lights are off and he doesn't turn them on, even as his last grips of sanity slip between his fingers like ash. Eugene lights a cigarette, the orange flame throwing his face in sharp shadows as it catches the end of the smoke and smolders. He flicks the lighter shut and inhales, the tobacco filling his lungs like bayou humidity. He shuts his eyes with a sigh, releasing the smoke. Now he lets the images come- Babe practically lifting him off the ground, moonlight lighting up his hair, his crooked grin and the way he said Gene’s name in the office. 

His eyes fly open and before his brain can catch up with his hands, he’s thrown the silver lighter across the room like he’s Babe Ruth. The lighter dents the wall like the shell of a hardboiled egg, and Eugene’s shaking all over. He’d been a goddamn fool to think God would ever give him something as wonderful as Babe. Eugene had thought he’d begun to understand the vague form of love, the thing which he’d always learned made the world spin and kept men sane. He’d never had that before, not once, and he wasn’t sure what sort of pipe dream he’d found in Babe, but having it ripped away like a bandage had gutted his heart out with a spoon and left it to bleed all over the floor. 

“ _ Nom de Dieu _ !” He curses, and he has this insane idea of throwing around every piece of furniture in the room, or maybe just himself out the skinny window. Babe could be bleeding in a field in Germany or trapped in the burning corpse of a plane, and no matter how fantastic of a doctor Eugene was, he couldn’t reach Babe wherever he was now, and his skills meant nothing when it mattered most. 

Eugene is torn between wanting to know exactly what happened to Babe and never wanting to know at all. He thinks it would give him some peace of mind to know if he’d landed safely or if he’d been shot down, or merely that he’d gotten lost. That seemed like a Babe thing to do- just get lost. 

He slumps onto his bed, the uneven springs digging into his pants as he takes a long drag on his cigarette. His hair is a mess from where he'd run his hands through it, and it’s gotten far too long. Eugene is paler than ever, and as the anger drains from him like water through a strainer, the last color in his face fades. Outside the night is black as pitch, it reminds him of winter swamp water on a chilled night. He waits for the sound of another engine, a lone P-51 making its way home on its final residue scraps of fuel. Babe will step out, tired and shaken but glowing with life, and Eugene will never again take for granted what God gave him. 

Eugene smokes down the rest of his pack, and the whole room will stink of cheap tobacco for days. He waits hours, staring at the walls and ceilings of the room. The photo is still in his pocket, burning a hole into his coat. He doesn't think he can take it out because then this will all seem real. 

At some point Spina walks in, his nose wrinkling at the hazy smoke that’s filled their room from the cigarettes. Spina crosses the room and opens the blackout curtains and window. “Jesus Eugene, you know it ain’t good to smoke so much.” 

“They’ll get really mad if they see that window open.” 

“I ain’t gonna turn on a light, it’s too late for lights.” Spina collapses on his bed and unties his shoes around a yawn. “I’ve never seen you like this, Eugene. What the hell happened?” 

Eugene taps ash off the end of his smoke into a glass cigarette tray. “We’re gonna be doing this for another four days. How many are we gonna have to treat? How many won’t make it back? I always thought the Air Corps genuinely valued the pilots, especially the good ones.” He shakes his head. “They been lying.” 

Spina doesn't offer any words at that, instead, he only settles into his bed as a faint wind moves his dark hair. Eugene looks out at the dark smudge of sky and hill, the vague slope of the hangar roof and the handful of P-51s and P-37s still on the tarmac. The 90mm M1s are pointed towards the sky, and men with searchlights wait beside them, ears and eyes trained for enemy aircraft. Eugene wonders what will happen if Babe comes limping in at this hour if they’ll shoot him right out of the sky. 

“You gotta stop thinking so hard,” Spina grumbles, his voice raw from exhaustion and shouting all day. 

Eugene exhales a lungful of smoke. The cigarette is just about finished, smoked nearly to the butt and he’s promised himself it’ll be his last one for the night. “Do you know what happened?” 

Spina frowns. “To Heffron?” 

The name is like a punch to the gut. “Yeah.” 

“I don’t think anyone saw him go down. Malarkey says a bomber crew might’ve.” 

Eugene’s face sullens. “A bomber crew? On what plane?” 

“Hell if I know! Jesus Gene, just go to sleep.” 

He doesn't fall asleep that night, not really. Eugene is so exhausted that he’s sure that if he falls asleep he’ll never wake up again. At one point he’s shivering, listening to the wind and humming the Vera Lynn song under his breath, and the next thing he knows there’s the growl of the British fleet coming home and the American one just waking up. 

Eugene moves through February 21st on autopilot, his mind somewhere far away from his hands. He can’t so much as look at his office, the crackle of the radio yanks him back to that moment, to hands in his hair and breathless quivers, and a heat he hasn’t felt in years. Babe was bright and warm, with a smile that went on for miles.

The rest of the week passes in a similar sort of haze, and Eugene’s hands are crusted with dried blood by the end. He’s living on the vain hope that Babe will come back, that he’ll storm into the infirmary with an ear-splitting smile, a faint mark on his cheeks from where the goggles had dug in over the old frostbite scars. But day by day the hope slips further and further from him, like a line of rope being pulled through his hands with the end rapidly approaching. 

The entire endeavor of the Allied war campaign had never appeared more fruitless than it did at the end of Big Week, despite the numbers the brass boasted about, Eugene had seen the carnage with his own two eyes. With Babe there, Eugene had felt something like pride in being apart of the great crusade, there was an easy rightness in fighting Nazi Germany. But the blood kept coming and the great expanse of Hitler’s army was still spread out over 244,706 square miles of Europe, and somewhere in all those miles was Babe Heffron. 

Eugene’s work is monotonous, or at least he makes it monotonous, but on the final day of the week, his carefully constructed composure crashes like a house of cards. 

Nurses fly around him, their dresses soiled with bodily fluids as the day’s batch of casualties come in on stretchers, supported between the shoulders of friends. Eugene was helping a kid into a respiratory jacket, his oxygen mask had been administering high levels of CO2 and uranium instead of oxygen, and it had torn up his lungs. He spared a glance at the door and caught sight of a shock of Irish-red hair and a burnt leather jacket. 

The world ground to a halt and Eugene’s mind raced, his brain fuzzed as if he’d just gotten whiplash. The world narrowed to a needle-thin point and balanced on a knife’s edge before the pilot spoke and his voice was all wrong, his face too round. 

It wasn’t Babe. 

But somehow, Eugene’s legs had folded up beneath. The cold linoleum was pressed to his cheek and all he could see was shoes and the spark of red hair. Someone was calling his name. The needle-thin point of the world gave way to nothing but welcoming darkness. 

He wakes under sun-bright light that warm the room like an oven. Eugene grumbles, his pounding headache thuds in time with the drum of his heart, threatening to split his head in two. He presses his palms to his eyes, blooms of color burst and fizzle behind his eyelids. As a child, he remembers how he used to sit on the back porch and porch and rub his eyes to see the colors. He thought he was the only one who could do it, that it somehow made him special. That was until his Grandmere told him it would make him go blind. 

“Eugène?” Renée’s soft and calloused hands take his wrists and pry them from his eyes, and he blinks up at her worried expression. He hates seeing her upset. 

He turns his head to the side and finds that he’s in a hospital bed and that all the beds around him are full of pilots in varying states of pain. The blackout curtains are down, and nobody’s yelling anymore. 

Eugene isn’t used to being on the receiving end of care and it makes his skin prickle. “What happened?” 

Her worried expression deepens as she passes him a glass of water. “You collapsed while treating a patient, right in front of everybody. You frightened us.” 

Eugene sits up to take the water and his head gives another thrum of pain. Of course, the pilot with the red hair. For a breath, he’d thought it was Babe, and that was enough to make his knees go weak. But the face hadn’t been right, nor had his voice, and once Eugene had realized his mistake the floor had been yanked right out from under him as a wave of sadness he’d been pushing back all week fell over him and soaked him to the bone. It’d been enough to steal his consciousness. 

He hands the glass back to Renée and rubs his temples. 

“How much have you been sleeping?” She hands him a methadone pill which he takes gratefully. 

He swallows the pill. “Not much.” 

She hisses. “You worked yourself right into the floor. You're lucky it wasn’t worse.” 

Eugene looks around the infirmary. “Is the patient alright? He wasn’t breathing too well last I saw him, coughing up a lot of blood.” 

“ _ Mon Dieu _ , he is fine! Did you not hear a word that came out of my mouth?” 

He rubs his temple again. It seems to help with his headache. “I’m sorry for frightening, ya’ll.” 

He knows it sounds fake and paper-thin, but he means it. The nurses have enough on their hands, enough blood. They don’t need the head doctor passing out on them. The truth was, he’d hardly left the infirmary in the past week. He took more shifts than anyone else, hurrying from bed to bed and doing tasks that were typically for the nurses, not him. He thought if he just hurried, walked a bit faster he could save them all, or at least, save the person he hadn’t been able to save. 

“Is he up?” Barks a voice from the opposite end of the ward, loud enough that a few of the patient’s eyes snap open and Eugene’s head gives another drum of pain. Dr. Robinson strolls towards them, his coattails flapping behind him. Eugene had never been the man’s biggest fan, he was loud in an obnoxious sense and about as wide as he was tall with grey hair and a booming midwest accent. He was good at his job, but only in the impersonal sense like he was only there for the glory of being a part of a war. Eugene suspected he was bitter about missing out on the first war and bitter about missing out on the second one, too. 

“You scared us real good Dr. Roe.” He says, stopping beside Eugene’s bed, which with every passing moment Eugene wants out of. “Passing out all over the floor like that, you're lucky you weren’t elbowed deep in a patient.” 

“Sorry, sir.” 

Dr. Robinson gives him a long look, then shakes his head. “I’m letting you go.” 

The words drop like a brick. Eugene can only blink while Renée gasps, “ _ What? _ ” 

Dr. Robinson rolls his eyes. “I see that y’all can’t take a joke. I’m letting you go for the week, not forever. You’re exhausted, too exhausted to be working, especially when it could cause someone a life. You don’t want someone dying just because you were too tired, do you?” 

Eugene looks away. “No, sir.” 

“Me either, Doctor.” He claps him on the back. “So, I’m sending you to London the first week of May for some R&R. That sound good?” 

He hasn’t been away from the base for a good year, except for the time Babe dragged him out to the bar on Christmas Eve. He wonders how Dr. Robinson could read a person so badly. “What am I supposed to do in London, sir?” 

The man shrugs. “Go dancing, catch a USO show, chase some tail. You know, all the best parts of the war. Get a little drunk, buy some bonafide London merchandise for Mama Roe. I don’t care what you do, so long as you’re not here.” He gives Eugene another slap on the back to drive the point home. 

Renée’s eyes flit between them, her shoulders tight. “I don’t think Eugene wants to go to London, sir.” 

Dr. Robinson doesn't even look at her. “Course he does! Everybody’s gotta go see that big clock tower once in their life, right?” 

That was how Eugene found himself on a train, bearing east towards London. He didn’t know much about London, other than it was supposedly bombed to pieces. He had seen photos of the city in newspapers, and one of the English nurses had been kind enough to write out an itinerary for him. He wasn’t sure if he’d follow it, but Eugene had to agree with Dr. Robinson on at least one thing: he needed to be away from the base. Away from the suffocating memories that he wanted to lean into, only for his heart to be reminded that Babe wasn’t there, that nobody knew where Babe was. 

He presses his forehead to the cool glass of the window, his breath fogging up the image of the countryside chasing by. The shallow hills were pockmarked with bomb craters, and the occasional leaflet that the Germans had dropped months before, speared on tree branches and flapping in the wind. The towns the train stopped at were grey and dismal, the people thin and hunched over with their eyes on the sky. Eugene’s gut twisted, it made him feel lucky that his family was safe at home in the cradle of Louisiana. 

Eugene had wanted to argue more with Dr. Robinson, Eugene had insisted that it was a one-time thing, that all he needed was one good sleep and a strong cup of coffee and he’d be alright. He said the same to Renée, and she’d only shook her head and told him, “Eugene, you aren’t the kind of tired that a cup of coffee and a good night’s sleep can cure.” 

He wasn’t sure a trip to London would cure it either, but every hallway of the base reminded him of Babe, every cloud and engine and A-10 jacket, every glance of red hair had Babe in it. 

Eugene drifted asleep, lulled by the gentle rocking of the train and the cloudy skies. He awoke when the train ground to a halt, smacking his head on the back of his seat. He mumbled a curse in French as people stood to collect their suitcases and hurried off the train. 

He steps off into King’s Cross Station with legs stiff from the journey, his eyes still blinking back sleep. He’d ditched his doctor’s coat and slacks for civilian clothes, and he clutched a tattered suitcase that contained one spare change of clothes and a photograph. His wallet was full of the savings he still had from the states, which had been converted into British currency. The only thing he’d ever bothered to purchase up until this point had been cigarettes, and he could get those on the base. 

King’s Cross was bursting with people, men and women in uniform, civilians on their way home from work, American and British servicemen alike, children clutching their mother’s coats. Eugene had never felt this out of the water before. What on earth was a swamp kid doing in King’s Cross station, halfway across the world? 

He looks back at the train and contemplates getting right back on it, but it’s already pulling away towards some greater destination. 

Eugene takes a deep breath and lets the crowd push him out of the station and onto the street. The air smells of gasoline and the Thames, smoke drifts up from chimneys and tangles with the heady scent of tobacco. The buildings are tall, made from brown brick and centuries old. Eugene had never been in a city, had never seen so many people in his life. It takes his breath away. 

If Babe were here, he’d know what to do. Maybe he’d even be glad to be back in a city. Eugene imagines him excitedly pointing out the architecture, the narrow streets, and odd accents, a smile cracking his face in two as he explains, “You know, London is great and all, but  _ Philly _ …” 

His carefully constructed good mood topples. The city doesn't feel new, nor exciting. But maybe it’s big enough for Eugene to get lost in. 

He finds the inn that the nurse had recommended as the sun goes down. His room is small and smells of boiled cabbage and mothballs. There’s a suspicious stain on the carpet and a dried plant in an orange pot. The innkeeper didn’t bother with blackout curtains, instead, the window is covered with thick black paint. Despite all this, the street outside is quiet. A bird chirps. 

Eugene collapses on the bed with a sigh, lighting a cigarette. His suitcase bounces against the duvet and he wonders what in the world he’s doing. He has the thought often. It hits a little close this time.

There is no radio in the room, only a wardrobe with a few bent hangars, and a desk smushed against the wall. Eugene wishes there was a radio. He had grown up with music. The only nice thing his Grandmere had owned was a phonograph with a brassy flower that music poured from. She loved Debussy, Satie, Ravel, anyone French. He saved up all his money one year from working on a shrimp boat and bought her a radio, and from that point on the house was filled with Edith Piaf and Josephine Baker. Eugene used to shuck oysters to the crackle of that radio or fall asleep to his Grandmere humming  _ Parlez-moi d’amour _ . 

Merriell always liked jazz. His Grandmere called it the devil’s music, but when she was away, they used to flip through the static until they found the bright notes of Duke Ellington or Artie Shaw. 

For the first time in three years, Eugene plays with the idea of going back. He wasn’t sure if he could build a life for himself in Bayou Chene, not after he was outed. But he could find his way to New Orleans, get a job at a hospital and visit Merriell and their Grandmere on the weekends. He’d still be by the Mississippi, still, be able to smell the spring wisteria and Spanish moss. He wanted to do it with Babe, and there was no Babe. 

Eugene shudders. Babe is gone. Lost in the deep throats of Nazi Germany, and only God knew if he was alive. Every time Babe went up in that plane it was as if Eugene’s heart was flying through the sky in a metal tube, vulnerable as a baby bird on the forest floor. Eugene didn’t know where he was if he was okay. He starts to shake, and once he does he can’t stop. 

This wasn’t how his life was supposed to go. He was supposed to get a nice girl, bring her home to the Bayou on a doctor’s salary. He wasn’t supposed to cry over a redheaded fighter pilot from the edge of Philadelphia, with a crooked smile and steady hands. 

He prays that night. Hasn’t prayed in a long, long time, but he does then. Every word of it is for Babe, for God to keep him in this world. Eugene had always been an individual, and he still is, but he’s certain that his hands were made to hold Babe’s, that every brag of his heart was for him. Eugene had never wanted to be known, had always been too afraid of it. But then came Babe. And then he was gone. 

The sky over London is sunny the next day. Eugene leaves the Inn late, well after the sun has risen. He buries himself inside his coat as he heads down the street in search of breakfast and coffee, a ration book in his pocket. 

The coffee is terrible in London, but the food is good. He buys a pack of smokes, and then another just because he can. He finds Big Ben and has lunch in Picadilly. He hurries past the bombed blocks, the rubble spilling out from the shells of the buildings like blood and guts. It was as if somebody had lifted the city and then dropped it so it all broke apart. 

Eugene marvels that there are so many people in the world, so many in one city. 

He buys a record to ship home to his Grandmere, although he doesn't think it’ll make it home in one piece. It’s a real shitty apology and he knows it, but it’s the most he can do when his heart is cracked and splintered like the glass of a cockpit. 

He goes to a pub. He doesn't dance, but he likes the music. The next night he finds another pub, and there’s something infinitely funny to him about an English band playing New Orleans jazz that he starts laughing around his cigarette. He tips them anyways. 

Eugene leaves London on March 6th, the same day that seven hundred bombers and eight hundred fighters bomb Berlin. It’s the first daylight raid on the German capital, and everywhere he looks there’s something like hope in everyone’s eyes. 

In Berlin, Hermann Göring, the captain of the Luftwaffe, watches the P-51 turn over his city and says, “Dear Lord, the jig is up.” 

As Eugene’s train hurtles back towards the base in England, there is a knock on a cell door in France, and Babe Heffron’s eyes fly open. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Notes:  
> \- that's an actually quote from Göring! Apparently he said, "When I saw Mustangs over Berlin, I knew the jig was up."  
> \- I looked a lot into life in wartime London and it was super interesting! I didn't include a lot of what I found, but apparently people wore identification tags on their wrists so if they died in an air raid they could be identified in the same way servicemen wore dog tags. Rationing was also super strict, and there were very few children in the city because they were all sent North where they'd be safe from Luftwaffe raids. 
> 
> Sorry about how angsty this chapter was, but it's not a Baberoe fic without it. Please don't forget to leave comments + kudos, they always make my day!


	7. Austria

_ “Never in a field of human conflict was so much owed to so many by so few.” - Winston Churchill  _

Eugene awoke in a sweat, and for a shivering moment he believed he was back in Louisiana. Wind blew from the opened window behind the bed, stirring the papers on the desk like leaves in the fall. The blackout curtain, which he’d forgotten to close entirely, shifted against the open window with a rattle. He took in heaping gulps of the cold air, the English wind that he could never confuse for the muggy heat of Louisiana. 

He shuts his eyes, chasing the last remnants of the dream. His mind brings to him images of a sky the color of the sea, with clouds atop clouds that built like columns of broken dreams, and a little metallic bird of a plane burning them open. 

He had stood on a wooden boat that rocked on the Mississippi’s murky waters. The cypress trees rose like giants from the depths. He had dreamt that he was covered with blood like he’d taken a bath in it. From the shores of the river came taunts that would haunt him for the rest of his life, that six-letter word that held his entire life. From the opposite bank stood his grandmere, and from the sky had come Babe in a ball of flame. 

Eugene removes the palms of his hands from his eyes and the wind blows a sheet of paper right off the desk and to the floor. The silvery moonlight slips in from the open window, illuminating the three letters on the nightstand. It was two of these that he could blame his current state for. Well, he shouldn’t give all the credit to them, but they certainly played a role. 

One was from his Grandmere, the second was from Bill Guarnere of all people, and the third wasn’t written yet, but it was addressed to his Grandmere and he doubted it would come to fruition. 

The one from Guarnere shouldn’t have caused him as much lamentation as it did, and the sensors had had a hay day with themselves when they weeded out his gratuitous use of expletives. The entire thing was one long anger-fueled grief, directed as much towards Eugene as to the war and Babe. Eugene didn’t know why Bill had felt the need to send him a letter, as though he could have done anything to keep Babe from being shot down. 

The other from his Grandmere urged him to come home because apparently, she could feel his anguish from across the Atlantic. He didn’t question it, even as a boy she had known when things were wrong and he suspected it went deeper than her simply being observant. He hadn’t written home since he volunteered, and even that had been a very brief message. The blank letter glares up at him as he lights a cigarette with jittery hands. He considers putting the end of his lighter to it, but in the end he only clicked it shut and rolled himself out of bed.

March became May, and the cold snow gave way to endless rain. The pilots complained relentlessly about turbulence and landing on a soaked tarmac, and about how loud thunder could be when you were actually in the clouds. 

Eugene found ways to continue forwards, mostly by putting Babe out of mind. The photo was buried in a drawer in his office, which he rarely used, under a stack of books he never touched. He preferred the rain to the snow and the coming warmth that the wind promised. The countryside had turned green as moss, and the trees were budding, the cherry trees thick with white and pink blooms. 

All that anybody talked about was the coming invasion. Most agreed it would be France, but a few pointed out that it could just as easily be the Netherlands or even Norway. But the pilots had their hearts set on France. 

When they weren’t raiding Berlin, they were raiding the coast of France. 

Eugene spent all those months wondering what happened to Babe. Despite doing all he could to not think of him, Babe was always at the back of his mind. Eugene was certain he wasn’t  _ dead _ . He was positive he’d be able to know, to feel that. Although he also knew he was grasping at straws and placeboed hope. 

He saw him everywhere. Every laugh reminded him of the happiness Babe brought with him. Eugene saw him everywhere- he was his sky, his sun, his clear dawn, and earth. It didn’t seem possible that Eugene could feel so much for one person, and it seeped out of him and filled him up like the sea. 

The longing however, became painful. Nearly excruciating until it was all Eugene could think of. But then May continued, and the searing pain became a dull ache that pulsed with each thud of his tired heart. 

Eugene found that his hope was sliding through his fingers until it was becoming harder and harder to grasp. That was until he was outside, smoking a cigarette and watching the rain slide off the African Lilies that someone had planted. Hope came in the form of a soaked and cursing Joseph Liebgott, who stomped through the mud with more than his fair share of bitching. 

Eugene frowns as he approaches. “Are you alright?” 

“None of us are fucking alright, Doc. We all come in varying shades of fucked.” 

Eugene raises his eyebrows at that and inhales on his smoke before he lets it go. “That’s quite the observation.” 

“Well lucky for you, I’m not feeling quite so fucked today.” Liebgott stands under the overhang, water dripping from his fringe. 

“Why, they letting you go back to the states soon?” 

Liebgott shrugs and pulls out his own pack of cigarettes from his bomber jacket. “They’re letting a bunch of us go after the invasion. That ain’t why I’m in a good mood.” 

Eugene looks at him from the corner of his eye. “You got a funny way of showing it.” 

“Oh so you’re the funny guy now.” Liebgott lights a smoke with a sigh and shakes his head. “I’ve been talking to some of the bomber guys, and get this, this navigator dick named David Webster- most awful person you’ll ever meet by the way, rich as gold and left  _ Harvard  _ to come fight this war; says he saw what happened.” 

Eugene’s eyebrows furrow as he repeats, “What happened to what?” 

“Yeah.” Liebgott exhales the smoke. “To Babe.” 

He makes some sort of noise that’s halfway between a grunt and a gasp and his cigarette drops from between his fingers, rolling down the concrete until the rain puts it out. Eugene stares at Liebgott, his eyes wide as the moon with his mouth half-open. 

Eugene swallows the building lump in his throat. “Babe?” 

Liebgott does him a favor and ignores his outburst. 

“That was _ months _ ago!” He says, stomping out the cigarette. “He’s sure it was Babe?” 

Liebgott nods, twirling the cigarette between his fingers as the sky thunders. “Unless someone else was flying a P-51D Mustang called  _ Doris  _ on February 20th, it was him.” 

Eugene blinks, pushes back on the hope building in his gut. His voice comes out in a whisper the next time he speaks, “What did he say?” 

“Webster says they were off course on their way back after the run over Bavaria and they ended up over France and not Belgium. There were too many bombers and not enough escorts, and these Focke-Wulfs came up.” Liebgott shakes his head and takes a drag, letting out the smoke as he speaks. “The fighters were outnumbered three to one, they could hardly defend themselves, much less the bombers. Webster says  _ Doris  _ got tangled up with three of the bastards. Shot down two, but the third got a few good hits in before an MG in Webster’s plane shot ‘em down.” 

The rain comes down harder, in deep and driving droves so Liebgott has to shout to be heard above the downpour. “Wasn’t enough, though. Webster says he must have been out of fuel and couldn’t make it all the way to England because the dogfight lasted a good half hour. Says it was the craziest flying he’d ever seen in his life, couldn’t believe he never passed out. Anyways, a stray bullet from another fight comes in, finds just the right spot, sends the fuel tank up in flames.” 

Eugene swallows. His hands were shaking like a hypothermic. “Did he make it out?” 

Liebgott nods. “Babe opened up the cockpit and jumped out of the burning plane two miles above the ground. His parachute did the rest of the work for him, and he landed a few miles west of Troyes.” 

“Troyes.” Eugene mumbles, branding that name into memory. His throat is dry as he lights another cigarette. He had a name, a place. He could build all his dreams on that alone. 

“He’ll be alright,” Liebgott says, his gaze fixed on the shark nosed P-40s lined up on the tarmac. “If he’s lucky the French resistance scooped him up.” 

Eugene exhales as wild images of him parachuting into occupied France and digging through every house and corner in the entire country filled his mind. He would turn the land inside out until he found him. 

“He was supposed to go back to the States,” Eugene says at last, and neither of them are real good at opening up, but he’s barely talked to anyone for three months. “He asked for a three-month extension, he was never supposed to be a part of Big Week.” 

Liebgott turns to look at him. “You’re telling me they told Babe to go home and he refused?” 

“Yep.” Eugene studies his cigarette, his mind reeling. How was he supposed to just continue with his day? Somewhere out there, Babe Heffron was still alive. Eugene had never felt helpless before, but there was nothing he could do for Babe here, and the fantastic images of some superhero type rescue were painted in shades of vain. 

Eugene rubs his face. “Fuck.” 

Liebgott laughs dryly, stubbing out his cigarette. “Fuck is right.” 

** June 1944 **

Eugene misses D-day. 

He spends the morning of June 6th bloody to the elbow, as a pilot on a patrol over the beaches bleeds out from a grave chest wound he had poorly bandaged while in the sky. Nobody else is hurt, and the medical staff not helping him are curled around a radio, anxiously listening for reports on the invasion. 

“Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces supported by strong air forces and landing allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France. This ends the reading of communicating number one from Supreme headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force…” 

“That is it?” Anna hisses in her broken English. “That is all they can tell us?” 

The man under Eugene groans in pain as Eugene picks out the bullet from his chest. “Jesus Christ I’m missing it.” 

“You ain’t missing it.” Eugene drops the bullet into a cloth held in the hands of a nurse. “You helped make the army’s job easier.” 

The pilot shakes his head. Eugene is amazed he can speak at all through the pain and the morphine. “We missed the batteries ‘cause the clouds were too low. We didn’t do shit.” 

Eugene purses his lips and instead of answering says, “This is gonna hurt, okay? Do you need to bite down on something?” 

“Why isn’t the morphine working?”

“It’ll kick in, but we gotta do this first.” He pokes the needle through the skin, tuning out the frantic chatter behind him. The pilot curses. 

“We didn’t do shit.” He repeats, his voice tight and his eyes wet. His gaze cloudy and unfocused on the ceiling. “I’m gonna die and I didn’t do anything at all.” 

“You ain’t dying,” Eugene reassures, working faster. “You’re gonna be just fine, you hear me?” 

“No I ain’t!” He sobs, and then he starts convulsing, jerking like a marionette on strings. The nurses try and hold him down as Eugene tries to understand what’s causing it. 

“His heart is failing!” Renée shouts. 

Eugene looks around and yells, “Do we have a Defibrillator?” 

But the pilot stops moving, and his heart goes still. The infirmary quiets, their eyes on the dead man, the only noise at all is the crackle of the radio. Eugene swears he can hear the guns in France, the boom of the ships, and the German 88s and MG’s. Swears he can hear the thunder of planes crashing and men bleeding out on the barbed wire. 

He stands, flinging the needle to the ground. It bounces and rolls, the room exploding with noise as people hurry to get the pilot out of there. The other patients stare in shock, their eyes wide in their pale faces. 

Eugene storms out, lighting a smoke as he reaches the hallway and turns a corner. The man had been fine, up until his last few moments. Eugene had been fine. But the world was not fine, and he could not rest. He couldn’t save them all. 

Shoes click on the linoleum behind him. “Eugène!” 

He turns, and he’s all hunched up and drawn back into his shell as though being smaller could change what has happened to him. Renée hurries towards him, and wordlessly she throws an arm over his shoulder and helps him outside. 

It’s barely raining, just a spitty mist turning the grass green. The sky is filled with the sounds of planes. Renée and Eugene don’t talk, not for a long while. They lean against the wall and each other, Eugene chain-smoking while Renée watches the flowers and the rain. 

“I wish I wasn’t born when I was.” He says in French, even though Renée hates his God-awful cajun butchering of the language. “Wish I’d been born in some other time, some other place.” He gestures towards the field and the skies, and south; towards France. 

Renée smiles sadly, so it’s just the ghost of a grin that doesn't reach her eyes. “What? And miss all this?” 

After a long moment, and another cigarette he says, “I ain’t ever gonna see him again.” 

“That is not true. You told me he is alive. In France, yes, but alive.” 

He shakes his head. “Might as well be dead.” 

Planes take off, a few land. Renée wraps her arm around his shoulder again. “Eisenhour is going to speak. We should listen.” 

The wind changes direction, blowing a cold burst of spitted rain into their faces. Eugene blinks against the droplets. The entire war had been leading up to this moment, this day. Every drop of sand in the great hourglass of time since 1939 had been building up to now. And all Eugene can do is think of Babe. 

** Austria  **

**** Stalag Luft XVII was buried deep in the folds of the Austrian countryside. A sprawling eyesore of misery surrounded by rolling hills and thick forest, the complex was bleak under the blue sky. The large letters which read  _ POW  _ atop the barracks gave away its purpose to the pilots and bombardiers still in the sky. 

Babe was sat with about a hundred other poor souls in a large building with a low ceiling and concrete walls, their fingers bloodied from accidentally poking themselves with needles as they stitched together German uniforms. Babe always made sure to leave a bit of blood on it. 

“Hey.” Hisses the man next to him, an officer by the name of Lewis Nixon. Supposedly he was a spy, but the plane he was supposed to jump out of was shot down, and he told the Germans he was a rookie MG, which sent him to a POW camp and not somewhere much worse. Nixon’s eyes were bloodshot with dark bags beneath them. It was his fifth day in a row without alcohol, and while Babe was sort of proud of him, the man was a right mess. 

“They’ll cut off our fingers if they see us talkin.” Babe whispers back, poking the needle up and back down. It reminds him of Eugene stitching up his shoulder. 

“They’re not even looking at us.” Nixon cocks his head towards the door where four or so guards were huddled tightly together, speaking in hurried German under their breaths. 

Babe frowns but does not stop sewing. Cold dread pools in his gut. “Is something wrong? Why are they doing that?” 

Nixon smiles and whispers, “The landings.” 

“The what?” 

One of the guards looks up and they both duck their heads, their hands working faster than they had been a minute prior. Babe stares at his hands and the green fabric under him. A fresh scar curls itself from his palm towards the back of his hand and up to his elbow in the exact shape the flames had licked him. The guard narrows his eyes but turns back towards the others. 

“The invasion.” Nixon continues, voice so quiet Babe has to lean in to catch his words. Nixon had been shot down only about a month prior, his news about the war and the outside world was a lot more relevant than Babe’s. Still, he recalls how the pilots had always spoken of this supposed invasion, that had been the point of all their work afterall, clearing out the Luftwaffe so the Army could go in and take care of the Wehrmacht. 

“You don’t mean- that’s what they’re whispering about? You reckon we’ve done it?” 

Nixon nods, stitching a button into place. “It’s gotta be. There’s nothing else that would make them act like that. Every single one of them.” 

A vague glimmer of hope lights itself in his stomach. This life of his won’t last forever, he won’t be here forever. Somewhere out there was Eugene, and Babe was gonna find his way back. 

“Don’t look so happy, kid. They can’t know that we know.” 

“We should go to Moore, maybe he’ll know something about it. Bastard knows everything.” 

Nixon glances at him, then back to the uniform in his hands. “Yeah, alright. But you gotta be careful. They love picking on cripples.” 

Babe folds up his finished uniform, passes it down the line, and reaches for another. “I ain’t crippled.” 

“Then why the hell are you in here instead of building more barracks or shoveling the latrines, or farming?” He counters. “That limp ain’t going away anytime soon.” 

Babe glances down at his leg. After jumping from  _ Doris  _ into France, he hadn’t landed well. It’d been at least and a half since parachute training, and when he came in contact with the ground his right leg had buckled under him and splintered. The SS doctor that had taken a look at him a few days later when they finally found Babe hiding out in some bush had set the bone poorly, given him some crutches, and told him to let it heal on its own. Babe didn’t think it would ever heal right. He smiles grimly, thinking about what Eugene would have to say to that doctor. 

Babe can’t shake the feeling that he left Eugene. That he left him alone, left him to deal with the war on his own and wonder. The feeling eats him up, crawls over him like lice. What he wouldn’t give to send a letter, tell Eugene and everyone back home that he was still here. 

The guards disperse, two of them walk outside into the summer sunshine, while the others circle the prisoners like hawks watching mice. Babe pokes the needle through the fabric. He and Nixon don’t talk for the rest of the day. 

** England  **

A handful of days after D-day, Eugene finds it in himself to respond to Bill and Grandmere’s letters. He begins with Bill’s, giving him a brief account of the story Liebgott told him. It wasn’t much, but Eugene had felt better after being given the detailed story, so he figured Bill would. 

Bill only knew about the accident because Babe’s Ma had received a letter from the war department, explaining that her son was MIA. Which for most, was synonym for KIA. He couldn’t blame Bill’s anger, because Eugene had felt it too for so long until anger gave way to exhausted sadness. 

Eugene stares at the letter from his Grandmere for a long time, the radio humming in the background with a Glenn Miller song. The letter was a plea for him to come home, that he was gonna work himself to death in a USAAF base. He bit his lip. Men were dying for this cause, and Eugene wasn’t sure what kind of man that would make him if he left. Doctors weren’t abundant. Good doctors even less. He said as much to her in the letter, finishing with,  _ I know it’s tough having both Merriell and I gone, but the world needs us elsewhere at this time. I trust that you can be understanding.  _

In theory, Eugene figured this sounded noble. While not a word of it was a lie, he didn’t think he could leave England until France was liberated. Until he knew where the Hell Babe was. 

Every morning Eugene read the long-lists in the papers of POWs rescued from France as the Allies moved north and east, and the tight grip the Germans held on Europe began to fall apart between their fingers. 

On August 25th Troyes is liberated, the same day as Paris. Eugene reads the papers over and over again, turns them inside out in search of Babe’s name. He checks the bulletin boards, even goes to the one in town to look at the list of casualties and freed POWs. 

By September he forces himself to come to grips with the fact that wherever Babe is, it’s not Troyes. 

By October, he realizes Babe isn’t in France at all. 

** Austria **

“Jesus Christ it’s cold.” Nixon shoves his hands under his armpits. 

He and Babe are standing outside in the horrendously long chow line, clutching their bowls (which were the only thing which assured they’d get a meal) in the icy wind which rolled off the hills and slapped them in the face. 

“You haven’t been forty thousand feet in the air with only a jacket and a sweater.” Babe bites back, shifting his weight from his bad leg to his good leg. 

The line moves a few steps forwards, and if Babe tilts his head right he can smell weak stew and dried bread. “Say,” Nixon says. “You were in the 232nd FG, right?” 

Babe eyes him, then glances back at the distant sight of the food. There was no way he’d get a piece of beef or chicken this far back in line if he was lucky he’d get a potato or even a carrot. “Yeah.”

Nixon rubs his hands together, then shoves them back under his arms. “Did you know Winters?” 

Babe turns around fully this time, his brows drawn. “Captain Winters?” 

Nixon nods. “We went to OCS together in Georgia, split ways pretty quickly when he went to the Air Corps and I went to intelligence. I told him he was suicidal going into the Air Corps.” He shakes his head with a dry laugh. “Guess he’s better off than me right now.” 

“No shit?” Babe says. Privately, he thinks Nixon was the fool. Although maybe he didn’t go into intelligence to be a spy. “Small world, huh?” 

Nixon glances at the grey sky, then the food, the chow line. “How’s he holding up?” 

“I don’t know! I haven’t seen him in months. Last I did he was doing just fine. He’s probably stateside at this point.” 

Nixon’s frown deepens. “I don’t think he’d let them send him stateside.” 

Babe opens his mouth to agree, but before he can there is the familiar sound of engines in the sky. Distant, but every prisoner recognizes it instantly and their heads turn towards the noise as if all they were all connected to one body. 

The Germans start shouting, some run for the anti-aircraft guns others start shouting at the POWs. None of them move, eyes filled with blind hope towards the sky. Babe’s heart stutters as the first B-17 comes into sight. How odd it was to be on the ground this time. 

They don’t move until a German fires his gun into the air, and then they’re all being shoved towards the nearest barracks. The food temporarily forgotten about. 

A few men just dive to the ground, as the ground shakes with a fury like the old Gods coming back to life. In the distance, bombs drop, tearing apart the roads, and the train tracks a mile away. Babe just stands there, gaping at the sky as the earth shutters and groans, every shake sending stabs of pain up his leg. 

“Jesus kid, get down!” Nixon grabs his collar and hauls him to the ground, Babe going with him like a ragdoll. 

For half an hour they lie on the ground, knowing it won’t do shit and it’s all about luck. There is no air-raid shelter, no bunker except for the one set aside for the SS officers. The bombs don’t find them, they find every road and inch of train track around the camp, shaking the earth apart until it’s shivering like it’s got a fever. Babe can’t believe how small the planes look from here, how many there are. 

The German artillery throws it right back, and not one plane is shot down. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for typos! 
> 
> Don't worry, they'll find eachother again soon :)


	8. It's Been a Long, Long Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title from It's Been a Long, Long Time by Harry James

Eugene spends the remaining months of the war in much the same fashion as he spent it before, bloody to the elbow while he keeps to himself, always smoking cigarettes and watching the planes land. He goes for frequent walks, despite the snow and biting temperatures the winter of 1944-45 brings. Eugene pulls out the photo of Babe a bit more regularly now that he can stand to look at it, but it still makes his throat choke up at the same moment as a wave of comfort washes over him at Babe’s crooked smile and Doris, bright and gleaming and straight off the factory floor. 

During that winter there is a surge of replacement pilots, and most of them only last two or three missions, despite the Luftwaffe being nearly done for. Nothing can compare to Big Week, or November of 1943, but seeing the rookies come and go broke Eugene’s heart. He doesn't talk much because of it, and well, he’s still sore from Babe. 

He continues to check the newspapers and bulletin boards for news on liberated POW camps, but from what news he can gather, most of the POW camps they found turned up empty or contained only the weakest prisoners. The others had been marched off deeper into Germany and farther from the front. 

Eugene corresponds frequently with Bill, oddly enough. He keeps him updated on the pilots he knew that were still there: Luz, Malarkey, Liebgott, a few others. Most of them were back in the states serving as flight instructors. Those who had stayed had asked for an extended service time the same way Babe had. It was more common than Eugene had originally thought. 

As the Eastern and Western fronts move closer and closer together, Eugene has to start thinking about what he’s going to do after the war. Everyone always spoke of what would come after, what they would do, and where they would go, the families they would start. Eugene sits in his office, he’d only recently been able to bring himself to go in there. The afternoon sun pours in on a day in early April, gentle rays highlighting the books and papers on his desk. The radio crackles with an American station, _It’s Been a Long, Long Time_ humming in the background. 

The truth was, Eugene couldn’t imagine an after. For the past three years, he’d been living on this base, caring for pilots which came and went, but the routine was the same. He misses the bayou. Misses his Grandmere despite everything, misses the ribbit of frogs at night and the herons. He misses taking the motorboat through the levees and ducking under cypress trees, and his box full of shells that had washed in from the gulf. Eugene misses Merriell, who he heard from less and less. It took a long time for a letter to get to England from the Gilbert Islands. 

He misses it like Hell but doesn't think he can go back. Eugene scribbles a report, practically stabbing his pen into the paper. Eugene can’t imagine a future without Babe. The idea was tentative, he was scared to let it take shape in his mind. But he would never love someone the same way again. He’d leave behind all of Louisiana for him. 

Eugene figures he’ll volunteer again for the Red Cross after the war, station himself in France, and work in one of those refugee hospitals. If Babe was still alive, he’d end up there, Eugene reasons. 

A knock on the door scatters his thoughts like bomb fragments. He sighs at the pile of paperwork but calls, “Come in!” 

Spina pokes his head in, his gaze traveling over the mess. “I have been looking everywhere for you. You’re hardly ever in here.” 

Eugene shrugs. “I’m in here now.” 

“Say, there’s a USO show going on down in Hangar A, they’ve got a big stage and everything down in there and a band and the whole nine yards. You should come.” Spina steps in, leafing through the piles of filled out paperwork on Eugene’s desk. 

He leans back in his chair. “And just why would I wanna go to a USO show?” 

Spina throws his arms in the air. “Christ, Gene! Ya never wanna do anything but work! Ya gotta get out more.” 

Eugene signs his name on another sheet of paper, then places it in the finished pile. He wishes he knew how much paperwork doctors have to fill out before he became one. “Are both you and Robinson going?”

“Well, of course-” 

“Then shouldn’t we have a doctor here? Isn’t there supposed to be one at all times?” 

Spina can’t argue that, so he switches tactics. “I’ll stay here! You should go. See some girls, hear some music. All the best parts of life. You keep missing out, holing yourself in here.” 

Eugene’s mind flashes to Babe, to the bar and a smashed glass and all the best parts of life. He violently shoves the image from his head. “Spina, I don’t even wanna go and you do. You should be the one who goes.” 

“You’re impossible.” He sighs before leaving, the door closing behind him with a finality Eugene would rather not dissect. He runs a hand through his hair, the radio begins another Glenn Miller piece. It makes his skin crawl to think that he’s dead now, shot down somewhere over the channel. The war had taken too many already. 

**May 1945**

Eugene is passed out on a chair in the surgical ward. He only meant to sit for a minute, but the next thing he knows he is being jolted awake by a rush of nurses hurrying down the hall. Their eyes are bright, their steps filled with harebrained hope and excitement. He frowns, his eyes squinted against the light as he tries to sit up. His neck gives a crack of pain from the awful position he’d spent the night in. As he tries to rub feeling back into it, Renée rounds the corner, looking around wildly until her gaze lands on Eugene and she deflates with relief. 

“What on earth happened?” He asks as she pulls his arm from his neck and guides him to his feet. “Renée?” 

She drags him down the hall. “You’re going to miss it!” 

“Miss what?” He demands, his heart racing. Has something happened? Was there a raid and he’d somehow slept through it? It wouldn’t explain the excitement he saw in Renée’s eyes, the joy that had gone missing for so long. 

She steers him into the infirmary and they’re practically running, Eugene’s neck throbbing with every step. “Truman’s going to give a speech.” 

In the infirmary the blackout curtains are still pulled down, the sun still rising. Everyone seems to be up, every nurse in the entire base is huddled around one radio. All the patients are sat bolt upright in bed, gripping their sheets and the railings of the beds. Eugene turns to Renée and asks not for the last time, “What’s happening?” 

She throws her hands up in defeat, but she’s smiling and it reaches her eyes. “The war, Eugene. The war’s over.” 

“What?” He repeats. It’s his gut reaction because he hadn’t been able to imagine the end in years. Sure, he’d known it was coming, knew as far back as June, but here it was and he couldn’t wrap his mind around it being over. 

“Shhh!” One of the nurses at the radio hisses. “It’s starting.” 

Through the crackle of static comes a distant voice, strong despite being thousands of miles away. “This is a solemn but a glorious hour. I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day.” Eugene’s breath catches in his throat. It feels like a dream. 

“General Eisenhour informed me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly all over Europe.” 

There’s more to the speech, but Eugene doesn't remember it. He’ll remember those two sentences for the rest of his life, but the rest is drowned in a crush of joy. Patients scramble out of beds, nurses grab at one another and Renée pulls Eugene in for a tight hug and doesn't let him go until Anna grabs her face and kisses her. Everyone is too happy to notice or care. 

Dr. Robinson shakes his hand and Spina gives him a big hug, and there’s a huge commotion on the tarmac as pilots and ground crew run out with cheers on their lips and grins wider than the open sea. The nurses rush out, the patients stumbling to their feet or into wheelchairs. Eugene helps push a man out onto the tarmac, where his friends happily begin shaking his hand and cheering him on. The sky is grey and cloudy, but it might as well have been sunny and warm despite the wind that smells faintly of the sea. Liebgott hands him a cigarette and Eugene smiles gratefully as he lights it. 

“Can you believe it?” Liebgott says, shaking his head. 

“It’s over.” Eugene agrees although he says it to reassure himself more than anything because this still feels like a fevered dream. 

Liebgott exhales a breath of smoke. “It’s over.” 

A cheer goes up when an MG comes out of the base carrying bottles of smuggled alcohol and a shit-eating grin on his face. Eugene glances at Captain Winters, who only shakes his head and pretends he didn’t see it. Janovec is passionately kissing one of the nurses. 

Eugene is happy. He thinks he is. He feels lighter, a spark of hope in his gut. But he can’t shake the images of men dying under his hands, of all the planes that didn’t come back, the way the ground would shake during an air raid. The war had left so many dead. Why did he live to see the end of it when so many others did not?

“What are you going to do after this?” Liebgott asks, twisting the cigarette between his fingers. 

Eugene looks at the planes. He can almost see them the way Babe saw them, as works of art made of metal and glass, but they remind him of Babe. Even the sky reminds him of Babe. For once he feels like being honest so he says, “I’m going to go to France and look through every military hospital. That’s where they’re taking the POWs they find.” 

Liebgott looks at him, opens his mouth like he wants to say something but decides to hold off this once. Instead, he says, “I’m going to volunteer for the Navy. I’ve always wanted to fly a Corsair.” 

Eugene stares at him. He supposes he’s in no place to judge, considering he’s likely going to ask for a transfer to France later this afternoon, but Liebgott’s answer still makes him pause. Did he loathe going home that much? 

“I joined because I hated the Nazis,” Liebgott explains, looking out at the English fields. “I’m going to Japan because there’s still work to be done.” 

Eugene inhales a lungful of tobacco then lets it out through his nose, enjoying the slight burn. Maybe Liebgott was crazy, but Eugene wasn’t in any place to judge. 

A man approaches them, carrying a bottle of beer. He doesn't offer them any, but he raises the bottle towards them both before carrying on. 

“Who was that?” 

“Johnny Martin,” Liebgott explains. “He was the head of a few ground crews. He worked on _Doris_ before, well, you know.” 

Eugene purses his lips, joy slipping out of his clutches before he knows it’s leaving. He’s left feeling gutted and hollow. This should feel like the end, instead, he can’t enjoy it knowing that somewhere Babe was still there, that he wasn’t here with him. 

Eugene wants nothing more than to be done with Europe and the whole blasted continent, but he can’t leave him. He can’t go home until he knows. 

Troyes looks as if it was stolen from the pages of a storybook, all gabled roofs and bright buildings that were at least five hundred years old. The streets are made of cobblestone, and nearly every corner boasts a church. The land surrounding Troyes is flat farmland, dotted with small houses and farms. 

The sky is bright blue when he finds the American hospital, situated on a hill about a mile outside of the town. Flowerbeds fit to the bursting line surround the building, although they are overgrown and unattended, and the road leading to it is bombed halfway to kingdom come. A few nurses push patients in wheelchairs through the gardens, and an Army Jeep rumbles past Eugene as he approaches. 

He pushes open the door, and the lobby is crowded with families screaming at the receptionist to find their son. An old woman sits in the corner crying, her gnarled hands clutching a purse and a train ticket. A father is near tears as the receptionist frantically searches the files for their son’s name. Eugene stares and nearly walks right back out. These people had come from every corner of America to be here. Eugene wasn’t the only one looking for somebody, wasn’t the only one chasing a ghost and a tattered dream. 

The receptionist finds the name of the man’s son and allows him upstairs to the rest of the hospital. She looks close to tears herself but pauses when she sees Eugene standing there in his crisp doctor’s coat, a red cross band tied around his forearm. He’d withdrawn from the Red Cross, and technically showing his Red Cross license wasn’t legal if it wasn’t eligible now, but the receptionist waves him through without a second glance. 

“May I see your records?” He asks her, keeping his voice as steady as he can. 

She blinks. “What do you need the records for?” 

“A certain patient.” Eugene doesn't elaborate, but she sighs and leads him to a dusty closet crammed with records and boxes. Eugene deflates. It would take him hours to find any mention of Babe. 

She pulls down a box and hands it to him. “These are all our current patients. This one is all recently discharged patients, and the rest go further back.”

So many names. He swallows. “Do you have information on pilots that would have crashed in this area?” 

She sets her hands on her hips, her gaze scanning over the boxes. “Hmm. From what year?” 

“February 1944.” 

Her eyes glance at one box, then back towards the floor. “We might. The records aren’t very well kept. You might get a name at best.” 

“I’ll take it,” Eugene says. “Thank you.” 

“Of course.” She walks back towards the reception area. “Let me know if you need anything else, Doctor.” 

The door shuts behind her, blocking out the cries and yells from outside the door. The box in his arms is heavier than a crate of cement. He takes a deep breath of the dusty air and reminds himself why he’s here. 

He sits down, the box of current patients on one side, and a box labeled _Winter of 44_ on his other side. Somewhere, he was certain, he’d find Babe. 

After an hour of searching through dusty records, he found something. Eugene gasps when his finger stops on the name _Edward Heffron, Rank Sgt, Serial Number 23 064 097_. 

That was it. That was him. 

His handshakes. The document does not provide much, but it’s more concrete than speculation. In French, it reads, _Taken into custody by 6th SS regiment the night of February 22nd, 1944. Ten miles outside of Troyes. No plane found. Pilot sustained major injuries._

His heart sinks. Babe had been unlucky enough to be picked up by the SS and not the Luftwaffe. The SS was notorious for being cruel, and it was likely he’d ended up with the Gestapo. 

Eugene can’t breathe. Images flash like lightning through his mind. Major injuries. 6th SS regiment. Babe, falling from the sky and being pulled apart by faceless Germans. 

He sits back, his chest tight as though someone had clamped a vice over it. Eugene stares at the name, his heart pounding. What was he doing? Was Babe even alive still? That had been well over a year ago, and a whole lot could happen in a year. 

He takes in deep lungfuls of the dusty air until his heart slows down and he isn’t clawing for air. Eugene takes the sheet with Babe’s information on it and carefully folds it before setting it inside his suitcase beside the photo. He smiles at Babe’s grin, at the sense of peace it brings him. 

“Did you find what you were looking for?” The receptionist asks him on his way out. 

“Yes,” Eugene says. “Thank you.” 

He pushes open the door, a fresh breeze filled with the scent of flowers greets him. It smells like his Grandmere’s perfume, calling him home. 

“I can’t.” He whispers in French. “Not yet.” 

His mind spinning, Eugene takes a train to the opposite end of the city. He keeps his suitcase in his lap and grips it tightly during the short journey. All the money he owns is in it, and it isn’t much. He’s using the last of it to journey through France in his search. He pulls out the handful of Francs in his pocket, the coins rattling cheerfully in his fingers. He had always wished to visit France. His Great-great Grandparents had been from Bordeaux, and his Grandmere had photos of them near the Eiffel tower when it was being built, of them holding hands in the grape fields. As he watches Troyes zip past, he thinks of the swamps of Louisiana and wonders why they ever left. 

The train dumps him at a station with a hole in the roof. The journey had taken longer than he’d expected because of the gaps of missing train tracks and bridges that had been blown apart. The sun is at its peak in the afternoon sky, and the air is warm on his face in a way England never was. The fragrance of fresh bread wafts on the breeze from a cafe. When was the last time he’d had fresh bread? 

The locals give him odd looks when he asks for directions to the _Hotel de Louis_. One of them tells him he is better off going to Hell than that place, that Hell would be kinder to him. Eugene’s skin crawls, but eventually, someone offers him directions and he finds himself in front of the most beautiful building he’s ever seen in his life. 

The building is five stories tall, built-in elaborate eighteenth-century architecture with faint Greco-roman influences. Huge windows glare down at him, they are boarded by elaborate shutters and gables. Neatly trimmed bushes bursting with azaleas line the front, and the roof is a deep, starry-blue. British, French, and American flags hang from the front in the same place where a swastika once sat. The beautiful windows are boarded up and smashes, the walls littered with bullet holes. The azaleas watered with blood. 

As he approaches, a sentry stops him and asks, “Name and purpose?” 

Eugene pulls out his Red Cross license. “Eugene Roe, Doctor.” From somewhere down the street a piano plays. 

The sentry studies his license. “We don’t need a doctor here.” 

“I’m looking for someone.” He says bluntly. “I believe they were once in this building. I just need information.” 

The sentry returns his license. “Why is a doctor looking for someone?” 

Instead of answering he explains, “I’m looking for an airman who I believe was taken prisoner in this building. I have been all over France. I just need one more piece of information.” 

“We can’t give out prisoner information willy-nilly. That’s top-secret, for family members only. What is your relationship to the airman?” 

He bites back the wave of anger that rushes over him like boiling water. If they were a straight couple, there wouldn’t be any problem. But they’re not, and he can’t be honest. Were they even a couple? Was that too heavy a word to put on two frantic kisses in the middle of a war? 

“He was a close friend of mine.” He admits at last. “I’m tracking him down for his family, who cannot be here now.” 

The sentry gives him a long look. He’s older, probably too old to have fought and is bitter over it. Eugene glares right back. 

“Fine. Ask for Monsieur Bonnefoy, he will help you.” 

Monsieur Bonnefoy ends up being a man even older than the sentry, with an accent somewhere between French and German. He seems happy enough to help Eugene look. 

“The Germans kept very diligent records.” He explains, guiding Eugene through the hollow hallways of what had once been a hotel. The rooms had been stripped bare, the furniture burned and the windows barred and bordered up. It had been converted into an SS base, where prisoners were held in the many rooms. 

Monsieur Bonnefoy leads him into the only well-kept room, with a huge desk and a broken bust of Hitler on a bookcase. The window looks out over the city and towards the green fields in the distance. “We’re lucky they kept such good records. It has helped many locate loved ones.” 

He opens up a file cabinet and pulls out a folder marked Flieger, Februar 44. 

“Sgt. Edward Heffron, oui?” 

Eugene hates that office, feels as if it’s pressing in on him from all sides. That the ghosts of it’s once inhabitants were breathing down his neck, watching him from the walls. 

Monsieur Bonnefoy looks for a long while, Eugene shifting from foot to foot. He understands why the civilians had cautioned him against this place. Evil and anguish dripped from the walls like honey, permeated the air like a gas. 

“A-ha! Sgt Edward Heffron, 23 064 097.” 

Eugene jumps. “May I read it?” 

“Do you know German?” 

“No…” 

“Then I shall translate it for you.” He proclaims, clearing his throat. “Arrived the 24th of February, in poor condition. Suffering third-degree burns and a shattered leg. Dr. Egleburt set the leg before he was transferred to cell 24. Served since 1942. Will not give up location of Air Base, nor plans on the invasion despite heavy questioning. Kept until April 3rd of 1944. Transferred to Stalag Luft XVII.” 

“Where’s that?” Eugene snaps. 

Monsieur Bonnefoy purses his lips. “Austria.” 

Eugene’s knees nearly give out. “Austria.” 

He sets a comforting hand on Eugene’s back. “I’m sorry. I know it is much to take in. Many of the prisoners held here were taken to Stalag Luft XVII. Most were found in Bavaria after a very long March to escape capture.” 

“Where did they go after?” 

“A hospital in Strasbourg, right on the German border.” 

The coins clink in his pocket, a flash of red hair and a smile flickers in his mind. He was going to go to the ends of the earth for him, risk everything for a fevered and desperate kiss because what else did either of them have? 

“Strasbourg.” He repeats, committing it to memory the same way he had Troyes. 

“It won’t be easy.” Monsieur Bonnefoy warns. “The hospitals there are overwhelmed with every refugee and POW under the sun that’s been spit out of the Third Reich.” 

Eugene shakes his head, his grip on the suitcase tighter than a clamp. A dream. A desperate put-together cocktail of hope and love. “It’s all I’ve got, Monsieur.” 

It is night by the time Eugene’s train arrives in Strasbourg. The coins in his pocket are significantly lighter, don’t clank together so much. His grip on the suitcase is tighter than ever, the train bulleting through the French countryside, heading east. The stops are frequent. Transport trains still crisscross the country, and civilian trains are forced to move aside for them. Sections of bombed-out rails and bridges hinder the trip. The stops grow more and more frequent the farther east Eugene finds himself, the faces of the other passengers grow paler and paler. 

The cool summer air greats him as he steps off the train once more. Above him the stars wink down, flickering like lamps billions of miles away. Eugene cranes his head to look at them thinks of how they looked on Christmas Eve when he and Babe walked home from the bar. Even here, on the other side of the war, they burn his eyes. 

Exhaustion drags at him, attempting to pull him under like an anchor to the bottom of the sea. The oblivion of sleep seems heavenly to him. He passes many hotels, some nicer than others, but after his experience at the _Hotel de Louis_ , he isn’t so sure he’s ready to sleep at once. 

He was certain Babe was here. Certain in the way his Grandmere could tell when he and Merriell were going to get hurt before it happened, certain in the way he could smell gumbo in the dregs of swamp air. They had been apart so long, there was no telling what Babe had seen, what had happened to him. Would he even want to see Eugene? Did he still care for him? Think of him nearly every moment? Babe was always in Eugene’s mind, sometimes subconsciously. No matter what happened over the past year it had always circled back to Babe. 

He grips the suitcase tighter once more, as he winds his way through the hairpin streets of the city. Strasbourg had been fought back and forth between France and Germany for centuries. It was so near the border that Eugene could hear the Rhine as he approached _Hôpital civil_. The buildings were all medieval with crisscrossing beams, in styles that were both so French and German they blended like the water between the ocean and the Mississippi. 

Eugene passes the hospital at first. The building was beautiful, too beautiful to be a hospital. Roughly four stories with an arched entry and a pointed orange roof, the windows decorated with dark shutters. It was large enough to be a small town. The only thing which gave away the fact that it was a hospital at all was the massive Red Cross banner and the ambulance which raced inside. 

The stars blink behind the hospital, a light shining on the French tricolor. A piece of one wall had been blown away, another scraped by a tank. Eugene’s hands shake. If Babe isn’t here, he doesn't know what he’ll do. 

He fights the urge to light a cigarette as he instead steps through the arched entryway. The sentries don’t bother stopping him, both of them sharing a cigarette. One of them is missing an arm. 

Another receptionist gives him a curt nod as he enters. Eugene wears his white lab coat, and the hospital is large enough he can blend in with all the other doctors. He knows he isn’t doing anything wrong, but lying to the military is never entirely correct. 

“ _Excusez Moi_.” He says. “I’m a new doctor, I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of where the American POWs are?” 

The receptionist frowns at him and in French says, “Where on Earth are you from? I’ve never heard French like that.” 

Renée had said the same to him when they first met. He tries to hide his embarrassment. “Louisiana.” 

“Right.” She deadpans. She looks even more tired than Eugene is. “The American POWs are scattered throughout. Weren’t you assigned a ward?” 

_Merde_ , he thinks. “Do you have POWs from Stalag Luft XVII? In Austria?” 

She pales. “They assigned you to them? Unlucky bastard. They’re mostly in ward 23.” 

Eugene isn’t fond of the sound of that. He tips his head and says, “ _Merci, Mademoiselle_.” 

Ward 23 is on the exact opposite side of the building. Every part of the hospital is filled. Nurses and doctors hurry past him, pushing gurneys and carrying trays of medicine and shots of penicillin and morphine. It’s like the chaos of the infirmary at the base but multiplied to fit an entire hospital, and one of the biggest in France at that.

He’s on his way to ward 23, at a pace just short of running when a commotion makes him pause. 

“I told ya Doc! I’ve gotta go! I can’t stay here no longer!” 

That accent-

“Monsieur,” urges another voice, “You are in no condition to be going anywhere. Please stop- merde, can I get another nurse in here?” 

A nurse hurries past him and hurtles into the room, muttering, “Jesus Christ, again?” 

As if in a dream, Eugene walks towards the room as the voice from earlier cries, “Ya gotta understand, I need to see someone! It’s real urgent, I can’t stay here no more.” There was the sound of feet, of a bed being pushed aside. Eugene can’t breathe. 

He stands in the door, and Babe is struggling to stand up from a hospital bed while a doctor and two nurses attempt to push him back into the bed. The window behind them is open, throwing in a breath of cold wind. Another nurse pushes past Eugene, holding a scary-looking needle. 

Eugene grabs the door frame to avoid collapsing. After everything, he couldn’t be real, couldn’t be him-

“I’ll only be gone for three days! Just enough to get to England!” Babe pushes off the doctor who hits the wall behind them. The nurses try to hold him still enough for the other to give him a sedative. 

“Babe.” 

It’s barely above a whisper, a mutter in the wind in an open field, but everyone stills. Five sets of eyes snap towards him, but all Eugene can see is Babe. His heart melted suddenly, like a drop of flame. 

Babe’s red hair was long and messy, his bangs falling into his face. He’s so thin he looks like a strong breeze could push him over, pale as a ghost ready to fade away. His brown eyes are wide, and they lock onto Eugene’s, his mouth agape. 

What makes Eugene’s heart stop is the scar. It reaches across his cheek and spreads over his left eye. It’s a deep red, the skin twisted in places. The words from the documents rush into his mind, suffering third-degree burns. 

Jesus Mary and Joseph. It was like being shot in the heart, seeing him look like that. 

The nurse plunges the syrette into Babe’s thigh, and his attention is drawn away from Eugene. He looks back and forth between the syrette and Eugene, a crooked smile on his face. It’s the same one from the photo, the same one Eugene could look at forever. 

“Gee, would you look at that Gene? They got me!” He blinks. “How’d you find me?” 

Eugene can’t speak. It had taken everything in him to say that name, and now there’s nothing left. 

“Oh, it don’t matter. You’re here now. Hey is this a dream?” He turns to the doctor. “Is this a dream?” 

The doctor is still rubbing his head. “I’m afraid not.” 

“You hear that, Gene? It ain’t a dream.” 

Eugene swallows and gathers himself into a shape that almost looks socially acceptable. “What happened to you?” His accent comes out thicker than usual like it does when he’s upset. 

“I’ll tell you all about it, Gene. Really, I will. But first,” he winks, “I gotta pass out.” 

And then he does just that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Notes:  
> \- The USO stands for United States Organization, they are a nonprofit group that provides entertainment like music and comedy for the military. They're still active today!  
> \- The speech from Harry Truman is the one actually given on VE Day. It's really cool and you can listen to it here; https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2019/05/a-solemn-but-glorious-hour-germany-surrenders-on-ve-day-may-8-1945.html I think that listening to speeches/broadcasts from the war is so cool and a great primary source  
> \- Strasbourg was originally a German city, but annexed back and forth bewteen France and Germany for centuries. It was returned to the French after WWI, and is part of France today, although the city is right on the border.  
> \- Hôpital civil was a real hospital as well! Originally built in 1119. It was relocated to be outside of the city walls during the 14th century, and was burnt down in 1716 and was reconstructed the following year. The buildings from then still stand, and it was added to during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. 
> 
> Thank you for being patient with me with updates. This chapter was hard to write, but we're reaching the end of this story. Thank you sm for reading, please don't forget to leave comments and kudos ily


	9. We'll be Alright

** Late April 1945 **

** Bavaria  **

**** Babe had stopped feeling his legs two days ago. He leans heavily on Nixon because the Germans hadn't bothered to give him a crutch. He hadn’t thought he would need one on that icy morning two weeks prior when the Germans herded them out of the camp like cattle and pushed them on a march to the west. 

As far as Babe was able to tell, the Germans had absolutely no idea where they were going either. They were fueled only by a desperate urge to flee the Russians approaching from the east. Nixon had said that Berlin had fallen. Babe wasn’t so sure he believed him. If Berlin had fallen, wouldn’t the war be over? He also said Hitler was dead, and Babe wasn’t so sure he believed that either. 

Nixon stumbles on a tree branch that had fallen onto the dirt path. He catches himself before he can fall, but Babe stumbles with him and lands painfully on his injured leg. The old wound flares up, white-hot pain from a crushed bone. Nixon catches Babe before he falls to the forest floor. 

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Babe mumbles, his voice tight. 

Nixon looks at a guard and readjusts his grip. “We gotta keep moving.” 

He shakes his head. “I can’t go no further.” 

“Look, kid, they’re gonna beat us if we don’t start going.” 

They had only been stopped for half a minute, which was a half-minute too long. It took a tremendous effort to lift his head. 

A German was coming closer, an old man too old to fight, with an angry look in his eyes that made Babe’s skin crawl. He puts his left leg forward, and pain splinters up like lightning.

“I think I broke it again.” 

“You did not,” Nixon says, his tone tight and urgent. He all but pulls Babe along, and Babe makes a halfhearted effort to look like he’s walking. The German leaves them alone. 

The sun dips below the hills in the west, towards home. Babe’s mouth waters. The forest cools, shedding the warmth of day like a sweater. They had been walking west for weeks, but every step felt further and further from home and safety. They had left many along the path from the camp, men who’d collapsed from exhaustion, whose bodies couldn’t support them anymore. The Germans paid them no mind. They only wanted to push them further, as far from the Russians as possible because, for them, the Russians meant death. 

They stumble another mile, falling further and further back in the crowd. 

His leg is on fire, and all he can think about is food. His stomach grumbles painfully. “You gotta let me go,” Babe says. “I’m slowing you down.” 

Nixon grits his teeth. “I am not letting you go.” 

“Fine.” Babe concedes, then drops like a sack of flour. 

Nixon tries to pull him up, but Babe doesn't bother trying to stand. He could lay like this forever, staring up at the pine branches and the watery span of sky. It’s peaceful. The forest could swallow him up, turn him into a tree. He wouldn’t mind. 

Nixon tugs at his arms, looking over his back for guards. The other POWs don’t spare them a glance. “Babe, you gotta get up.” 

He wants to, but his leg is broken. He’s tired and hungrier than he knew possible. It bites at his bones and skin, sucking them into his body. 

“What about Gene, huh? What would he say if he just saw you laying here?” 

Babe frowns. An evening breeze rustles the treetops, the pine needles brushing together with a sound like chattering skeletons. Throughout everything, he wasn’t even sure Eugene existed anymore. He seemed too good for a world such as this, and Babe was almost convinced he’d dreamed him as some hair-brained way to get him through the day. 

He could hardly remember what it was like to fly, the way a plane shuttered around him, and lifted him into the sky. 

“Gene?” He mutters. 

“Yes, the doctor you told me all about. You wouldn’t shut about him, remember?” 

He thinks of shattered glass and a blue scarf, trembling hands stitching his skin back together and a crushed hug in a hallway. Nixon was right. He had to get up. 

He tries to sit up. It was the hardest thing he’d done. Nixon helps him to his feet, and his knees buckle. 

A shrill whistle shatters the air and the guards begin ordering them around in German. Babe could cry with relief. That meant it was time to settle in for the night. 

Nixon half drags him to a ditch on the side of the road, where the other POWs were curling up for the night, their stomachs grumbling. Nixon leans him against the side of the ditch, and it’s nearly comfortable. 

“I’m gonna go try and find us some food, okay? Maybe someone to come look at your leg, too.” 

“Okay,” Babe mumbles as Nixon hurries off. He watches him go, then reaches for his pocket. There’s a small hunk of dry bread, wrapped in the blue scarf. He had ripped it off the throttle before jumping from the plane, it was part of the reason he’d gotten burnt so bad, but he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it behind, of it going up in flames. Babe had kept it ever since. 

He traces his hands over the small old streak of blood from when he’d cut his hand. It smells of smoke and dirt. Babe grips it tightly. Of course, Eugene was real. How could he think differently? He had to make it out of this, had to get home and see him again. 

He glances at his leg. The bone isn’t sticking up out of it like last time, which he takes as a good sign. Eugene would know what to do. 

Regardless, a broken leg was a death sentence here. He saw it in Nixon’s eyes, in the way the other POWs gave him a pitying glance. Walking on it would only fuck it up even more than it already was, but he didn’t have much of an option unless he wanted to sit here and succumb to starvation or get eaten by a bear. Or shot by the guards. 

Babe stuffs the scarf back into his pocket and gnaws on the dried piece of bread like a dog with a bone. There’s no flavor to it, but having anything in his mouth is a balm to the hollowness in his stomach. 

In all his time in the Air Corps, he’d never quite believed he’d ever be a POW. He figured that if he was shot down that’d be the end of it. He chews off a penny-sized piece of bread. His family and friends probably thought he was dead. Eugene probably thought he was dead. 

Nixon comes back with more bread and a splint, and he wraps Babe’s leg to it with an old shirt. Babe falls asleep not long later, but Nixon stays up for a long while, watching the stars and listening to the hum of airplanes. 

Babe is woken by Nixon frantically shaking his shoulder. He opens his mouth to ask what’s happening, but Nixon claps a grimy hand over it. Babe glares. 

“Something’s wrong.” 

Obviously. The men around them are either asleep or peering cautiously over the ditch with wide eyes. It is a clear night above them, the stars and the crescent moon throwing the forest into deep shadows. The wind carries the faint scent of gas. Babe frowns. The Germans had no gas, the stuff they had wouldn’t be wasted on a mangly group of POWs. 

“The guards are gone.” A man whispers in a heavy midwest accent. Some of the others start whispering amongst themselves, shifting uncertainty. Nixon removes his hand. Babe sniffs the air again. The smell of gasoline is unmistakable. 

“Maybe they all went to the bathroom?” Babe suggests. 

Someone else says, “Or they’re digging our graves.” 

Silence follows that. Nixon shakes his head. “They’d make us dig it. They wouldn’t leave us unless something was very wrong.” 

“Wrong for them.” The midwestern guy points out. “Maybe it’s good for us.”

Down the line, there’s a whisper that rises like a wave, and a man comes bolting down the road. Babe’s heart doubles. If the Germans were still around, the runner would have been shot. 

The man who suggested the Germans were digging their graves stands and stops the runner. “What’s going on?” 

The runner pants, taking in great gulps of air. Between breaths, he exclaims, “Shermans, just up the road!” 

That would explain the smell of gas. The men start talking, dropping the whispers for breathless, excited words. Babe stares at the runner, who hurries down the road to tell others. There is a faint sound of boots, hundreds of them, and then from the crest of the hill is an American tank. 

** June 1945 **

** Strasbourg  **

The silence which rings in the room after Babe collapses is the same brand of silence found in courtrooms after a jurisdiction. The three nurses and the Doctor stare at Eugene like he’s sprouted a second head, their eyes jumping between him and Babe as they try to make sense of the previous moment. 

Eugene averts his gaze from theirs. There is nowhere else to look but Babe, and the rush of emotion that brings with it too much. So his flick about the room like that of a guilty man’s, as the silence grows longer and longer. 

“Who are you?” The doctor snaps, at last, still clutching his head. 

“I'm a doctor,” Eugene replies in French, which eases some of the tension.

One of the nurses frowns. The one who’d given Babe the syrette. He tries not to hold it against her. “How do you know this patient?” 

Eugene’s reaching the end of his line. He was exhausted. He had not properly slept since departing England, about three days before. Eugene had always been one to stretch himself thin, spread himself out until there’s nothing left and he’s given all that he can. The past year had been stretching him further and further until he was thin enough to be blown away on a puff of wind. 

_ How do you know this patient _ ? Did she not realize she had no right asking that? If only Eugene could tell her, tell her just how he knew this patient. 

He looks at Babe, resting peacefully amongst the white sheets. He looks about dead. How was he supposed to answer that question? 

“Well?” She prompts. 

He swallows. “I used to volunteer at the base he was stationed at. We were uh, good friends.” 

The nurse raises a single brow. “Are you volunteering here?” 

“Collete,” One of the other nurses' snaps. “He’s exhausted. It’s late. We can figure it out tomorrow.” 

“If he isn’t a Doctor at this hospital then he needs to leave.” She angrily tosses the empty syrette into a bin. “Visiting hours are at ten a.m, not midnight.” 

A call for a nurse echoes down the hallway. Before any of the others can take it Collete is marching out the door, letting it slam behind her. Eugene jumps. It sounds like a gun. 

Eugene runs a nervous hand through his hair. “I apologize for uh, all that.” He gestures vaguely towards the door and Babe. 

The doctor shakes his head. “Do not worry about it. However, we do need to know if you are volunteering here.” 

He’s wearing his coat. He has a license. He could say yes. It’s on the tip of his tongue, but then he glances at Babe. He was right there, breathing steadily despite his ghostly pallor. Eugene had spent too many sleepless nights thinking of him. He didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he knew Babe would need one-hundred percent of Eugene. He wasn’t sure he’d ever offered up all of himself, had never allowed himself to be truly known. But he thought he was ready to give Babe that, and he couldn’t give it to him if he was running around a hospital the same way he had during the war.

He doesn't think of all the patients when he answers the Doctor’s questions, only of Babe. “No.” He says.

The doctor shifts from foot to foot. “I’m going to have to ask you to go then.” 

“Can’t I,” he pauses, scrambling for words, all of them either too much or too little. “I’ve come a long way. I just need a few minutes.” 

The doctor purses his lips and looks from Eugene to Babe. Maybe he understood now what all the ruckus had been about, why they had to keep the pilot sedated seventy percent of the time because otherwise, he was trying to kick, punch, and bleed his way out of here. Maybe the doctor would finally not have to wrestle him back into his room every day. 

“Alright.” He says and Eugene’s heart soars. “But don’t let Collete in here.” 

The door closes behind them and Eugene counts to three. He barely makes it to two before he’s at Babe’s side, the strings he’d fought so hard to keep unraveling like a fishing line. His throat goes tight, his eyes hot and wet. Babe is there, breathing and so full of life despite everything. The world had crumpled, but now it smelt of spring and a cautious beginning. Eugene supposed that at some point in the last eighteen months he’d built his life around Babe. He was never not thinking of him. 

He’d been gone for so long that Eugene doesn't know what to do now that he’s here. 

Eugene lifts his head. He isn’t crying, just sort of shaking with wet eyes and a lump in his throat the size of a bomb. There’s a furrow between Babe’s brows, and without thinking, Eugene smooths it out with a wavering smile. 

The burn scar is even worse up close. The skin rises and twists, sinks in others. It stops just before his nose and under his eyebrow. His ear hadn’t been so lucky. Eugene shatters at the sight of it, twisted and red. Had this happened when Babe was in the air? Or had it happened after that? 

He lifts Babe’s hand, then nearly drops it when he sees the scar wrapping itself around his hand and down his arm, thin as a broomstick handle. The elation of finding Babe alive melts like butter in a pan. He runs his thumb over the scar and Babe sighs in his sleep. At first, Eugene thinks he’s hurt him, but when he looks up, Babe has shifted in his sleep, curling closer towards him. 

Eugene swipes Babe’s hair from his eyes. It is still that wonderful vivid red, the one that glowed like a flame in the sun. It’s hidden under a layer of grime and dirt. But it’s there, and it brings Eugene enough peace of mind for him to fall asleep. 

He is woken by the doctor at an ungodly hour in the morning, the faint blush of the sun rising the only indication of the time. Eugene rubs his face, blinks away the sleep. He doesn't look around the room or question where he is. Even in the morning grogginess, he remembers why he is there. 

Eugene had fallen asleep on the chair beside Babe’s bed, his hand resting loosely on the bed. He was thankful he hadn’t fallen asleep holding Babe’s. 

“I thought we told you to leave.” His words are harsh, but there’s no real malice. 

Eugene rubs his face. “Sorry.” 

The doctor sighs. “Why don’t you go get some food. There’s a nice place down the street. Maybe book a hotel.” 

Eugene looks at Babe, still fast asleep. “When will he be released?” 

“He would have been released a week ago.” He explains, flipping through a bundle of papers. “But he kept having those ‘fits’ as we call them. That’s what you witnessed yesterday. Kept making it worse.” 

Eugene frowns. “What worse?” 

The doctor shifts from foot to foot again, a nervous tick. “He lost over a third of his body weight. He can’t stay awake for more than a few hours. He isn’t strong enough to walk around for long.” 

Eugene’s neck hurts from the way he’d slept. The sunrise lights the hospital room in a soft glow, ebbing the painful twist of Babe’s scar and making his hair shine. “What happened?” 

“Dunno.” The doctor admits. “Won’t talk about it. I think it’s best you come back in a few hours. You look like Hell.” 

Eugene knows he’s right, but he rubs a hand down his face. He couldn’t imagine leaving  _ now _ . After all this searching, all the heartache and fear. He had never been certain that Babe was alive until a few hours ago. 

What if Babe woke up and Eugene wasn’t there? What would he think? He couldn’t do that to him. 

“I can’t go.” 

He sighs. “Then I’m gonna have to force you to go.” 

“You can’t do that.” Eugene snaps. 

“Actually I can. If I force you to leave you can’t come back.” 

Eugene looks up at him with a look previously reserved only for Sobel, the FG’s commander who sometimes thought it a good idea to fly straight into a  _ sturmgruppen _ over a battery of 88’s. The doctor raises his brows. “I think you want to come back,  _ non _ ?” 

Reluctantly, Eugene stands to leave. He doesn't look at Babe as he goes. Can’t bring himself too. 

Strasbourg is even more beautiful in the morning. In the light the flowers gleam under the rising sun, the rays filtering through the leaves of the oak trees. But it also highlights the destruction. Bombs had cracked the cobblestones, a German anti-aircraft gun left abandoned, pointed towards an empty sky. The breadline at the bakery winds down the street, the women lined up are nearly as thin as Babe had been and the children wear a haunted and weathered look. 

He books a room in a hotel. The room is cheap because the other half of the hotel is crumpled as if it’d been sliced in half. They serve him warm soup with actual meat in it. 

He doesn't mean to fall asleep, but the next time he wakes up, the sun is high in the midday sky. A car honks below. Eugene frowns. When was the last time he’d heard a car? When was the last time they could spare that kind of gas? 

His eyes fly open. Babe. He would think that Eugene left him. In a rush, Eugene shoves his keys and spare change into his pocket. He leaves the medical coat, rushing out into the street like he’s being chased. He curses under his breath, his untied shoes slapping the broken cobblestones. Jesus, he’d already abandoned Babe once, now he’d gone and done it again. 

He passes the receptionist but she doesn't stop him. The hospital is just as busy now as it had been yesterday, perhaps more so. There are more civilians than yesterday, hanging nervously in the hallways outside rooms and wards. Eugene isn’t sure he remembers where Babe’s room is, but his feet steer him instinctively in the right direction regardless. 

Babe’s door is closed, and Eugene yanks it open without a second thought. The window is open, and a warm breeze carries the scent of fresh bread and summer flowers. Voices from the street below drift up. The hospital room doesn't seem as bare as it had last night. The blue-green walls and white sheets look almost homey. The room is empty apart from Babe, who was miraculously still asleep. Eugene swallows. It wasn’t normal for any type of patient to be asleep this much. Even Bill, after getting his leg amputated, hadn't slept for over fourteen hours at one time. What was in that syrette? 

Eugene closes the door behind him. He’s panting from the run, the rush of emotion. He places two fingers below Babe’s jaw and only relaxes when the light thrum of Babe’s pulse finds his fingers. 

He collapses onto the chair he’d slept in, scrubbing a hand down his face. He lights a cigarette, one of the last in his pack. He knew there were better vices than smoking. He glances at Babe. Vice wasn’t the right word. Vice was an immoral characteristic or habit, and Babe couldn’t be that. He didn’t know what he was, but a vice wasn’t it. 

Eugene takes a deep inhale, the smoke curling comfortingly in his lungs. He traces the scar on Babe’s hand, follows the jagged lines of skin down his palm. It needed a skin graph, but Eugene wasn’t sure how much a skin graph could do for it at this point. The Germans clearly hadn’t bothered with one. 

The burns are extensive. Eugene shudders at the thought of Babe in the burning plane, thousands of feet above the earth. What on earth did they do to be born at a time like this? 

Eugene traces the scar through the space between Babe’s thumb pointer finger. He exhales a breath of smoke. After everything, he’d found him. 

Babe’s hand twists and grabs Eugene’s at the same moment he says, “Hiya, Gene.” 

Eugene startles like a scared cat, jumping so bad he drops his cigarette. He would’ve ripped his hand out of Babe’s by accident if Babe hadn’t been holding on so damn hard. “Jesus, Babe!” 

“Sorry.” Babe laments as Eugene stomps out the half-smoked cigarette. He didn’t sound apologetic. 

“You can’t go around scaring people like that.” He kicks the crushed cigarette under the bed so the nurses won’t find it. Eugene wonders if Babe knew that he was talking about more than just being startled. 

“They don’t like you smoking, here.” 

“The window’s open,” Eugene says, although he doubts it’ll cover the smell entirely. Babe just raises his eyebrows and smiles. Warmth pools in Eugene’s gut, a ball of happiness he’d thought lost forever. He smiles back. 

“I’m real sorry.” Babe sits up so he can look Eugene in the eye. 

He frowns. “Sorry for what?” 

Babe throws up his free hand in exasperation, the other one still holding Eugene’s. “Leaving you like that.” 

Eugene blinks, his mind spinning. How could Babe be sorry for that? Sorry for something so far from his control? He couldn’t apologize for the nature of war, nobody could. “There was nothing you could have done!” 

“Yes, there was.” For once Babe is the calm one in the conversation. His voice is scratchy and thin. “I knew I was low on fuel. The Luftwaffe was retreating, they were going home, but I just, I couldn’t let them. I couldn’t believe everyone was going to let them go.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know what came over me, Gene. I should have just let them go. But I went anyway, and it resulted in this mess,” he gestures at his injured body, at the space between them. “I couldn’t take all of them. I wasn’t that good. The bomber helped me but… it wasn’t their job to protect a fighter. They probably got shot down because I couldn’t stand to see the Germans getaway.” 

“They didn’t get shot down.” 

“They didn’t?” 

He shakes his head. “The only reason I knew you were MIA and not KIA is because Liebgott talked with the bomber crew who saw it. They completed their twenty-five missions and went home. They’re all okay.” 

Babe opens his mouth to respond, but Eugene cuts him off. “I don’t blame you for a second, Babe. Don’t even think about blaming yourself. It could have happened to anyone, at any time. You’re here now, with me. You’re safe and it’s gonna be okay. So don’t blame yourself.” 

Babe’s eyes water. “Gene-” 

Eugene holds up his burnt hand. “Who the hell treated this?” 

He looks away, a cloud of memories in his eyes. Maybe Eugene shouldn’t have brought it up at all. “A German doctor.” 

“What’d they do?” 

“I don’t know! Wrapped it in something? The bandages were on for months.” He tugs his hand away with more force than strictly necessary. It feels like a slap in the face. 

“Babe,” he says, then doesn't say anything for a long time as they just look at each other. A solitary tear travels down Babe’s scarred cheek. “I’m sorry it took me so long to find you.” 

Babe looks away and inhales a shaky breath. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the blue scarf, tattered with dirt and grime and an old streak of blood. But Eugene would recognize it anywhere. He gasps, and takes it gently, running his fingers over the frayed cloth. 

“You kept this?” 

Babe nods. “I couldn’t leave it. It- it helped me get through everything. Because I knew I had to get back to you. I was so scared I wouldn’t be able to find you after the war. I didn’t think you’d go back to Bayou Chene. I thought we’d never see each other. But I had to convince myself that wasn’t true.” He shakes his head. “The scarf helped.” 

Eugene sees his own fears reflected in Babe’s words. He reaches forward and wipes the tears off Babe’s face, which only makes him cry further. 

“How’d ya find me?” Babe asks, his accent so thick Eugene struggles to understand what he said. The words were smushed together, uttered in a single breath. 

“I knew you landed somewhere near Troyes. So I started there, and it took me here.” 

“You could have just gone home. You didn’t have to come looking for me.” 

“Course I had to find you. I couldn’t have gone home without knowing what happened for sure.” Eugene hands the scarf back and Babe tucks it into his pocket. Babe smiles at that. 

“Gene, I, look I gotta know something okay?” 

“Okay.” 

“I gotta know if all we got rests on some,” he gestures vaguely. “On some half baked kiss in an office a year and a half ago. Cause I dunno if I’ve ever felt this way about someone or if I ever will again and I just, ya know. I can’t put my whole life on a kiss if it only happened in the moment, in the fear of war.” 

“I wouldn’t have come all this way if it was.” He says. “Knowing that you were still out there was the only thing that got me through every day, even if I could never be sure if you really were. I ain’t ever felt this way about anyone else, and if all we’ve got is two half-baked kisses then that’s enough for me.” 

Babe stares at him, his brown eyes searching Eugene’s face for a crack of a lie, or maybe to convince himself it’s real. His eyes are red, and maybe the scar should bother Eugene. But it can’t. Nothing about Babe could ever disgust him. 

Babe grabs his face at the same time Eugene leans forward, and they both see stars. When Babe silently opens his mouth, Eugene’s mind is blown apart into a thousand pieces. He’d go around the world and back just for this, leave everything behind for the way Babe tugged him closer. The kiss is salty from tears. It’s all the desperation from the last time they saw each other, the day Babe was shot down. There’s no finesse to it, just them both trying to convince themselves that the other is real. It aches. 

When they pull apart they’re breathless with swollen lips. But Babe smiles at him and Eugene smiles back, and maybe, just maybe, it’s all gonna be okay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Notes:  
> \- At the end of the war, many POW camps were evacuated and the POWs moved West because the Germans figured it would be better to be captured by the Western allies, in fear of being sent to Gulags. It was well known that German prisoners were treated much better by the British and Americans than by the Russians. However, these marches resulted in large casualty rates and lots of disease and hunger.  
> \- A sturmgruppen was a type of Luftwaffe formation  
> \- A lot of rationing continued after the war. Even in June food wouldn't have been plentiful yet. 
> 
> As usual, thank you so much for reading! Don't forget to leave comments + kudos!


	10. Learn Me Right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the song "Not With Haste" by Mumford and Sons
> 
> This is unedited! I might go back and edit it later though :)

Babe stares listlessly out the hospital window, watching a sterling swoop through the sky. The bird dives before pulling out inches from the ground and racing back up in a maneuver that makes even Babe’s head spin. Humanity hadn’t developed a plane capable of that just yet. 

He sighs. What he wouldn’t give to be that bird, go anywhere, fly wherever. To see nothing but clouds and sky again. Babe pokes at the mush of food on his lap. It was some sort of high-protein oatmeal, and he was just getting to the point where he could eat an entire bowl without it coming back up. Outside, another swallow joins the first, and Babe smiles. There had to be something wrong with him if he missed the impending doom of flying. He stirs his crooked spoon through the oatmeal. His Ma had always said there was something wrong with him because he’d always felt the need to live on the edge. He only felt alive when his life was in some form of immediate danger. 

Of course, there was an exception to that. Eugene made his heart pound the same way a dive had, made his stomach drop the way a sharp turn ten feet above the ground had. Although there was a warmth to the feeling Eugene gave him. If Babe wasn’t careful he’d go so far as to call it love. 

Babe forces a spoonful of mush into his mouth, grimacing at the taste. During his time as a POW he’d gotten used to only having a meal a day, why you could never get used to hunger, he came to think of it as an old friend, until the idea of being full seemed inane. The Doctors said that was normal. They introduced him back to food gradually, although Babe rarely wanted to eat it. 

The door of the room opens and Babe tenses like a bowstring, relaxing when he sees that it’s only Eugene. He is still pale, with purple bags under his eyes, but there is a glow under his skin too, one that Babe knew had been missing for a long while. Eugene gives him a small smile, closing the door behind him. 

Eugene’s visits were the only thing Babe had to look forward in the day. The rest of it was spent staring out the window, trying to read  _ Moby Dick  _ or being made to walk down the hallway a few times on crutches. 

“I got ya something.” Eugene tosses him a bar of chocolate. It takes Babe back to Christmas of 43’ when the fate of the world was still so uncertain. But back then they’d had each other, so it never felt too bad. 

Babe catches it, nearly upending his oatmeal if he hadn’t shifted his legs in time to catch it. The chocolate bar is wrapped in thin blue tinfoil that catches the light and crinkles in his hand. In curling cursive, it reads  _ Debauve _ . 

“It’s from Paris,” Eugene says, collapsing into his chair. “So don’t waste it.” 

Babe blinks. “You went all the way to Paris for this?” 

Eugene smacks his leg. “ _ Non _ . Some guy on the street was selling it.” 

“Oh.” He says. “Hey Gene, we should go to Paris.” 

Eugene glances away. “I went to London and it was bad enough. I don’t know if I could see Paris.” 

Babe unwraps the chocolate, the scent makes his mouth water. “When did you go to London?” 

Eugene looks out the window, the swallows are still there, sitting on a broken powerline. “Just after you… left. Dr. Robinson told me to take some time off.” 

Babe breaks off two squares of chocolate and hands one to Eugene. “Maybe some other time we can go to Paris. I heard it’s gorgeous in the fall.” 

The chocolate is dark and bitter, and it melts in Babe’s mouth. He hadn’t had any chocolate since the one Eugene gave him at Christmas, and nothing has ever tasted so good. It reminds him of home. 

“How’d you know dark chocolate was my favorite?” Babe asks. 

Eugene shrugs. “You mentioned it once.” 

They sit for a few minutes in silence, Eugene watching the world outside and Babe watching Eugene. It’s quiet beyond the crinkling of tinfoil and voices from the street below. Rays of sun filter in from outside, creating bars of light across the room. 

“I’m gonna miss it,” Babe says as he goes back to poking at his cast. 

He frowns at him. “Europe?” 

“Parts of it.” He admits. “I’m gonna miss flying and I’ll miss  _ Doris _ .” 

Eugene gives him an odd look, but something a tired understanding passes over his gaze and he nods. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the photo of Babe beside a brand new Mustang. Babe beams, and takes the photo from Eugene. 

“Gee, you kept this?” He asks and Eugene nods. “Look at her! She was all new, fresh off the factory floor, the paint still wet. It was better than the time I got my first bike, just like Christmas morning.” 

“I’m sorry she’s gone,” Eugene says. He had always thought it silly the way the pilots valued their planes just as much as others valued family. Maybe it wasn’t his place to judge, and Babe seemed genuinely sad that  _ Doris  _ was gone, burnt up like a tin can, and smashed to the ground somewhere in France. “Maybe once we get home you can try and get another plane.” 

Babe hands the photo back and smiles. “We?” 

He meant for it to sound teasing, but his voice sort of cracks at the end, and Eugene’s smile falls right off his face. It’s like a kick in the gut, and maybe Babe should have just left the whole thing alone. He didn’t know how he was gonna tell his family in South Philly that he was a queer, didn’t know if he’d be moving to Lousiana or some other corner of the country, but he was willing to do it, for him. 

“Well- I mean uh,” Eugene had never been great with words. “If ya want. I don’t wanna force ya into anything, and I know it’d be real hard but I thought that maybe we could try, ya know?” 

“Gene, of course, I’ll try! I could hardly imagine a life after all this,” he gestures vaguely towards the eastern sky. “But maybe if it’s with you, I can picture it real good.” 

Eugene smiles crookedly and sort of sadly then wraps his arms around Babe’s shoulders and pulls him in close. They sit that way for a minute, buried in each other's necks, reminding one another that the other is solid and real and tangible. Eugene’s fingers thread through Babe’s red hair.

“I should let you know I wrote some letters,” Eugene mumbles into his neck. 

Babe frowns but doesn't pull away. “To who?” 

“My Grandmere and my cousin. Oh, and Bill.” 

Babe pulls away at that. “You been writing to Bill?” 

“After you left he sent me a very angry letter once he found out you were MIA. I wrote him back once Liebgott told me what happened. I figured he had a right to know you were still here.” 

Babe runs a hand through his hair. His friends and family probably thought he was dead. He’d been so focused on staying alive, that he hadn’t thought about the grief his Ma and Pa were going through or that of Bill and all his siblings. He remembered what it had been like when Bill lost his leg, how Babe couldn’t be certain if his friend would live or not. He couldn’t imagine hearing about it from a letter, from the big official MIA telegraphs that Winters wrote out. His stomach twists. 

“He doesn't know,” Babe whispers. 

“He will once that letter reaches him,” Eugene says. “Speaking of which, when are they letting you go?” 

Babe picks at the rough edges of his cast, which ended just above his knee. “I dunno. They haven’t told me yet.” 

Eugene frowns. “Babe, you’ve been here since April. They can’t keep holding you here.” 

“They said they want me to eat better before I go.” 

Eugene looks at the tray of oatmeal Babe had set aside. If it were possible, his frown deepens. “You ain’t eating?” 

“Not as much as they’d like.” He admits. Eugene knew him well enough to know what Babe meant. 

Eugene scrubs a hand down his face. “I can only afford to stay in my hotel another two nights.” 

“Then we should go!” Babe swings his legs out from the bed and reaches for his crutches. “We can go right now, Gene. I can collect my wages from the war office on the way out of town, it’ll be plenty to get us to America.” 

“I don’t know Babe. If the doctors don’t think you’re strong enough to go you probably shouldn’t.” 

“But you’re a doctor!” He points out. “And you’re the one saying I’ve been here too long. I say we go. This room feels more and more like a cage every minute.” Granted, he couldn’t compare it to the bunkroom in Austria, or the cell he had been in when he crashed in Troyes, but now the war was over and he could go home. 

Eugene looks between the window and Babe. He had never been the best at reading Eugene, maybe they hadn’t spent enough time together yet, but Babe was pretty sure he had him won over. Neither of them wanted to stay in this hospital, where they could only see each other for about an hour a day. Eugene looked exhausted every time he came over, and maybe he always would, maybe exhaustion had ingrained itself so deeply into Eugene that it would never leave, but Babe liked to imagine that a day would come where he looked rested. He knew that day wouldn’t come if he was still in the hospital. 

“How will we sneak you out?” 

Babe smiles. Eugene did have a reckless streak. “I don’t know. You’re the smart one.” 

He narrows his eyes, but the corner of his mouth lifts. “If anyone asks, I’m taking you out to the courtyard to look at the flowers. Getting you a bit of fresh air and all that. 

Babe stands, shoving the crutches under his thin arms. He stuffs the chocolate and scarf back into his pocket, as well as his military papers the hospital had printed for him. It was everything he had. The clothes he wore now were a standard Air Corps Issued uniform, the one he’d worn the day he was shot down had been burnt to scraps, and the army had taken the dingy uniform he’d worn for a year in the camp. 

Eugene looks around the room. “That it?” 

Babe nods. “That’s it.” 

They make it down the hallway, Eugene glancing over his shoulder, again and again, tensing at every nurse and doctor that passes. He looks guiltier than a bandit, but Babe is too focused on walking with crutches. They pause when they get to the stairs. This was as far as Babe had gone before, and he was already breathless. The Germans had not only stolen his dignity but his body as well. Angrily, he grits his teeth and starts the long journey down the stairs, Eugene clutching his arm for support. They both breathe a sigh of relief at the bottom, and Eugene’s hand reluctantly releases his arm. 

Babe takes in deep, shuddering breaths, feeling like he’d run up and down a mountain. Eugene looks between him and the stairs. “Maybe the doctor is right-” 

“No!” Babe snaps. “ _ You  _ are right. You told me I’d been here long enough, that I was strong enough, ready to go home. I’m sick of this place. Sick of hospitals, of France, of this entire goddam continent! I’m going  _ home _ .” 

He readjusts his grip on the crutches and starts down the hall, past nurses and doctors and visitors and right out into the streets of Strasbourg. 

The fresh air carries the scent of distant lavender, it tastes of freedom and promise and Babe wants to take in as much of it as he can. 

“C’mon,” Eugene says. “We’ll go back to my hotel and get my things, then collect your money from the war office. After that well-” 

“We get on a train to the coast, then a ship to home.” 

Things aren’t exactly that easy. The war office has a difficult time finding Babe’s name and information, and a hard time scrounging up roughly two-thousand dollars. Once they do, all Babe and Eugene can do is stare at the cash in their hands, more money than either of them had ever seen in their lives. 

“It don’t seem right.” Babe shakes his head, his hands trembling as he folds up the money. “Everything I did and they give me money?” 

“What more could they give you?” Eugene points out. He was a volunteer. He hadn’t made a penny in three years. 

“I dunno.” Babe shoves the cash into one of Eugene’s clean socks, then sets it into his suitcase. It was late, the sun filtering in through the windows of the war office, making Babe’s red hair glow. “It just doesn't seem like I should be getting paid for doing the right thing.” 

Eugene glances away. There were times, even now, where being with Babe filled him to the brim. 

They take a train to Dunkirk, the nearest port city. Five years before forty-thousand English soldiers had stood on those beaches, the German line rapidly approaching as they prayed for a miracle. 

Babe and Eugene book two tickets on a ship filled with cargo. It wasn’t designed for passengers, but the crew must have taken pity on them because they let them on. Babe guesses it was because of his scar. He caught people taking a second glance, trying to look while not looking like they are. No one had asked how he’d gotten it yet, but he could see it on the tip of their tongues, the burning question in their eyes. It made him shift uncomfortably, try and hide it under his bangs but they weren’t long enough. He had never been one to hide before. 

The crew doesn't ask what happened to them. They must take one look at Babe’s tattered uniform and Eugene’s tired eyes to put together a story. 

They lean against the railing together, watching the sun glitter off the sea and the port of Dunkirk slip behind the rim of the waves. Babe breathes in the deep scent of the sea, the wind whipping his hair back, the massive ship rocking with the tide. 

“Do you think we’ll be back?” He asks Eugene, who looked about ready to pass out on his feet. 

“To France? You’re the one saying you’re done with this continent.” 

Babe traces his finger over the railing wet with sea spray. “I can’t believe it’s over.” He’d said that often, but he still half-expected to be shaken awake at the crack of dawn, listening to the distant hum of the bombers, or to wake up back in the camp or on the forest road in Germany. 

Eugene leans against him. “What are we going to do when we get to New York?” 

A piece of Babe wanted to say, “stay there” but he knew they’d have to go back and face their families, they both owed them that much. The war weighed heavily on both of them, alongside the time they’d spent apart. Babe picks off a piece of salt on the railing. “I don’t know. We could get coffee. Real coffee. Not the shitty walnut stuff in Europe.” 

“Alright.” Eugene agrees. 

“After that, I should go see Ma and Bill.” He can’t look at Gene as he says it, although he can feel him looking at him. “But I don’t want you to leave. I can’t leave you again.” 

“You didn’t leave me,” Eugene assures. He didn’t want to have that conversation again. Babe wasn’t the same person he’d been when he left, Eugene didn’t expect him to be. He didn’t speak very often about what happened when he was a POW, or about the crash or any of it. Eugene didn’t press him. 

He stands on the side of Babe’s face without the scar, and from that side, it was almost easy to convince himself that none of it had happened, that Babe had never been hurt, that they’d never been separated. Eugene didn’t think he could ever tell Babe, but he hated the scar. Not because it made him look different, but because when Eugene looks at it he can’t think about what happened. Maybe time would make it better, but they were a long way from that.

“We can go to Louisiana after,” Babe says. “See your Grandmere.” 

Eugene shifts his weight. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to go to Bayou Chene. I want to see her, but the town will see us together and they’ll know.” 

Babe taps his finger on the rail. “Maybe we can meet her somewhere, like New Orleans or Baton Rouge.” 

“Maybe.” His Grandmere didn’t leave the shack if she could help it, but maybe she’d make the exception. The thought of Babe meeting her made his stomach twist. 

The journey across the Atlantic takes a week. Both of them get seasick often, and Babe won’t stop staring at the sky. Every time they hear a plane Babe will drop what he’s doing and hurry onto the deck and excitedly point towards the sky and say, “Look, Gene, it’s a Boeing 377! That thing’s even bigger than a B-29!” 

Eugene figures they’ll have to live near an airport.

Neither of them was prepared for New York. 

It was far bigger than Philadelphia and even bigger than London. The city spread without limits, with buildings so tall they reached the clouds. The war seemed distant trouble here. Food flowed freely as a mountain stream, there were no bombed buildings, or signs pointing towards Air Raid shelters. The only mentions of the war were on the radio, in the dozens of posters that lined the street and newspapers that boasted news of the recent defeat of Japan on Okinawa. Rationing still took place, but it was nowhere near the amount that had occurred in Europe. 

As soon as they step off the ship in New York harbor, Babe pulls Eugene into the nearest coffee shop. They’re both exhausted from the time difference, but the week at sea had given them time to adjust. 

“Don’t you think we should get a hotel first?” Eugene protests. 

“Nope! Coffee first. It’s been three years since I’ve had a good cup.” 

Eugene sighs, but allows himself to be pulled into a dingy, hole-in-the-wall. The waiters shout at one another in Italian and Babe laughs nervously as they take a seat. “Do you think they’ll realize I’m Irish?” 

Eugene raises a brow. “The hair might give it away.” 

“Gee, you’re right. Maybe we should find an Irish place.” 

“Is Irish coffee good?” 

Babe’s leg bounces, an old nervous habit that makes Eugene smile. “Fair point.” 

However, the rich scent of real coffee, brewed from beans by hand is too much for both of them. The first sip is enough to convince Eugene that maybe Babe had a point in coming here first. Three years was a long time. 

“I can’t believe how different it is,” Babe says when they’re both on their third cup, staring out the window at the Fords that rumble past and the girls hanging on to sailor’s arms. “There’s no bombs, no famine, no orphaned children on the streets, no bread lines. At least, not like it was in Europe. The people don’t look up in fear when they hear planes.” 

Eugene nods in agreement. The city felt like it was crushing them, despite its vastness. It reminds Eugene of the swamp, in the way it went on forever, always changing and shifting. Babe at least seemed more at home. He looked as though he were trying to convince himself he was in Philly. 

“It’s-” Eugene pauses to search for the right word. “Safe.” 

“Yeah,” Babe whispers as if trying to convince himself too. “Safe.” 

They do not spend the night in New York. Instead, they take the train from Grand Central station to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. Eugene dozes fitfully as city after city slips by, all of them seemingly packed together as tightly as possible. His eyes snap open when Babe’s foot-tapping becomes more than he can handle. 

“Babe, if you’re that nervous we should have waited a few days.” 

“I ain’t nervous! It’s just the three cappuccinos. I don’t know how you’re sleeping after all that.” 

“Because I’m always tired.” Eugene grabs his hand under the seat. They’re pressed closer together than they should be. Babe’s foot stops tapping. 

A few minutes pass by and Eugene watches Edison zip past. The train doesn't have to stop for bomb craters, they never have to get on another track to let a transport train by. Within five minutes Babe’s leg is tapping again. 

“Do you think the letter’s gotten there by now?” 

“Probably,” Eugene says, although he can’t be sure. Certainly, a piece of paper traveled faster than them. 

“Do you think I’ll scare them?” 

Eugene turns to look at him. “How could you scare them?” 

“If the letter hasn’t come, Ma will still think I’m dead. And I know I ain’t the same no more.” he points towards his face with his scarred hand. Eugene’s pretty sure he’s pointing at more than just that. 

Eugene squeezes his hand. “It’ll be alright.” 

The train ride takes just under two hours, they arrive as night blossoms across the sky, the city lit up like a candle. They both stare at it. In Europe, the cities went dark when the sky went dark. Here, it’s as if the city is just waking up. 

Eugene helps Babe out of the train and down the stairs into the street, and he has to catch him when the first wave of fresh air hits, heady with the scent of the Delaware and gasoline. Eugene scrambles to prop him up as one of his crutches clatters to the street, cold dread filling him from the bottom up. 

“Babe?” He shakes him. “Babe ya gotta-” 

“Sorry.” He mumbles, rubbing his head. “I just- I wasn’t expecting that.” 

“You’re exhausted. Emotionally and physically. We’ll get a hotel, then see your family in the morning.” 

“No.” He snaps. “We’ve come this far, I gotta- I can’t spend another night away from home.” 

Eugene looks around them. The people on the street ignore them, while buildings rise like monoliths into the starless sky. Eugene takes in a deep breath and guides Babe down the steps of 30th station, past the marble columns, and to the street where he hails a taxi. He forces Babe into the back seat, mindful of his leg, and then slams the door. 

“Where’s youse guys off ta?” Says the driver, a middle-aged man with a potbelly and an even thicker Philly accent than Babe or Bill’s. 

“Uh…” he glances at Babe, who was staring blankly out at the buildings. “South Philly.” 

“You gonna have to be a bit more specific.” 

Eugene kicks Babe’s foot and he spits out an address. The cab starts so suddenly Eugene is thrown back in the seat, grabbing at the roof handle as they wrap around the corner like a poorly driven chariot. 

“Jesus Mary and Joseph.” He mumbles, watching the city whip past.

The sudden movement at least seems to wake Babe up because he laughs dryly and says, “Ya might wanna hang on, Gene.” 

“Youse guys serve in the war?” The cabbie calls back, taking another hairpin turn that has Gene muttering another prayer. 

“Sure did!” Babe says, and Eugene is left reeling from his sudden mood change. “I was a pilot and Gene here was-  _ is _ a bonafide doctor. Best there is! Kept my sorry ass alive.” 

The cabbie shakes his head. “I count my lucky stars I was too old for this war.”

“You going home?” 

Eugene’s stomach lurches like he’s going to throw up as the cab makes an abrupt stop at a red light, and outside it starts to rain which reminds him of England. The red glow from the street light makes Babe’s scar look even deeper. “Yeah, I am.” 

“I can take ya the back way if ya want. It’ll be a bit faster.” 

“That’s alright!” He and Eugene say at the same time as the cab screeches forward, tires skidding on the wet pavement. 

“You drive the same way I fly!” Babe says, and the cabbie just laughs. 

Eugene nearly throws up the empty contents of his stomach when they step out of the cab fifteen minutes later. The rain pounds the streets ferociously as Eugene grips a light pole, steadying his stomach until he can bear to stand straight, blinking water from his eyes as Babe tips the cabbie and stumbles out on his crutches. 

The cab had dropped them off on a long street, the row houses packed so close they looked as if they’d been glued together. All of them were made from red brick, with American flags waving from the front door. Babe and Eugene stand in a pocket of light cut out of the darkness by the streetlight as the cab spins away in a spray of rainwater. 

Babe blinks at the street, his face flickering with waves of emotion. Whatever good mood the cabbie had put him in was washing out in the rain, pooling at his feet like melted ice cream. 

“I dunno why I thought it’d be different,” Babe admits, drinking in the sight of the street. Two women speaking in rapid Gaelic pass them, their heels clicking against the pavement as they hurry home. 

“I suppose because I was different that meant home would be different too. But it looks the same as it did three years ago. Same red brick, same flags, same trees,” a rat hurries across the street, “same rodents.” 

Eugene wants to take his hand. Instead, he just stands there, getting wetter with every second, and searching for the right words. “Babe, it’s okay for things to stay the same-” 

“ _ Babe _ ?” 

Eugene turns so sharply that his stomach rolls with pain, but he has just enough time to see none other than Wild Bill Guarnere racing towards them before he grabs Babe and pulls him into a bone-crushing hug, his crutches clattering to the pavement. 

“Jesus where the fuck did you come from?” Bill yells, his voice tinged with emotion. “We all thought you were fucking dead, ya bastard.” 

Babe blinks, looking like he was having a hard time breathing. Bill still hasn’t released him yet. 

“You didn’t get Gene’s letter?” 

Bill releases him, putting an arm’s length between them as he turns and finally notices Eugene. He looks between them, and Eugene sees a million things in his gaze but all Bill says is, “What letter?” 

“The one explaining I wasn’t dead!” Babe cries as Eugene picks up his crutches and hands them back to him. “It ain’t here yet?” 

“It sure as hell is not!” Bill yells back, his face soaked with both rain and tears. “Sixteen months, Babe! Sixteen goddam months. Where was that letter even coming from?” 

“Uh, France.” 

“ _ France _ ? What in God’s name was youse doing in France? Going on a little vacation? A little trip to the shore? And what happened to your face?” 

“We were in a hospital.” Eugene snaps because Babe looks torn between throwing a punch and bursting into tears. 

Bill’s gaze flicks between them again, he opens his mouth to say something but before he can the door to the nearest house is thrown open. A woman stands in the doorway, framed by yellow light, her bright red hair curling above her shoulders. A white flag framed in red sits in the window with three stars, two blue and one yellow. Eugene’s eyes lock onto the gold star- Babe’s star. It meant he was dead. 

A girl around twelve leaps past her mother, nearly slipping in the rain. Babe leans on one crutch, using his free arm to embrace her. And then he does start crying. 

The woman comes down the steps and wraps her arms around them both. When she lets go, she begins speaking softly in Gaelic, her hand gently rubbing the scar as Babe quietly explains what happened in a frantic mixture of English and Gaelic. Once he’s done she hugs him again. Eugene wonders why Babe hadn't spoken more often about his family, whenever he spoke of home it had always been about Bill or Philly. 

At last, his mother turns towards Eugene and she smiles. “Who is this?” 

“Uh…” Babe looks between the two of them. 

“It’s alright.” She says, and then to everyone’s shock, she hugs Eugene, a tight and loving embrace, as if she’d known him his entire life. “Thank you for keeping my son alive.” 

Eugene exhales shakily as he meets Babe’s gaze over his mother’s shoulder. “You don’t have to thank me.” 

Mrs. Heffron pulls back, and in a heavy Irish accent says, “Yes. I do.” 

She pulls them inside, where Eugene meets Babe’s other sister and father. Babe was the only sibling to get his mother’s red hair. She feeds them leftover coddle, a thick stew made of sausage, potatoes, bacon, and onions. Eugene is full halfway through his bowl, as he tries very hard not to acknowledge the crushing silence in the dining room. 

Babe eats more slowly, and perhaps it’s only then that everyone realizes how thin he was. His arms were only slightly bigger than broomstick handles, and he kept his food close to him as if scared it would be taken from him. 

The silence is broken when his little sister sets down her glass of water a bit too roughly and says, “Are you gonna tell us what happened?” 

Babe looks at Eugene who only shrugs. Babe sighs, letting his spoon rest against the edge of the bowl. “My plane was burning up,” he points to his face, “that’s how this happened. I spent the rest of my time in a POW camp in Austria before we were liberated. I couldn’t write to you, I had no way of telling you I was alive and I’m sorry.” 

He purposely doesn't mention the forced march, the circumstances of why his plane was on fire, or the time he spent in the hospital. Eugene guesses his family will find out eventually, but he didn’t seem all that inclined to share more.

“What about your leg?” Bill asks, his arms crossed over his chest. 

“I parachuted out of  _ Doris _ and didn’t land well. My leg never healed correctly and I broke it again in the camp.” 

His little sister snickers. “You named your plane after Doris?” 

Babe glares at Bill. “He did.” 

Bill narrows his eyes, obviously suspicious of Babe not telling the full story, but he seems content to leave it at that. 

That night Eugene lays on the floor of Babe’s childhood bedroom, the walls crammed with photos of planes and Phillies scarves. He listens to Babe’s mother and father talking quietly downstairs in Gaelic and wonders what they think of them, if they know. 

“My Ma knows,” Babe says, his eyes glued to the ceiling, the covers pulled up to his chin. “She’s alright with it. I think she likes you.” 

Eugene nods. He supposes things could be much worse, but even he can feel some sort of divide between Babe and his family and Bill. He isn’t sure if it has to do with him, with their relationship, or if they’re simply trying to understand how their son could have come back from the dead. 

“How long are we going to be here?” Eugene asks. 

Babe sits up in bed, his cast made sleeping awkward. He was shirtless due to the summer heat, and even in the dark Eugene could see the scar on his chest and back, even redder and twisted than the one over his face. He could just about count his ribs. “I dunno. I love them, but I don’t think I can stay, it just doesn’t feel right. The city don’t feel the same, Bill looks at me like I’m about to break, my Ma is stretched so thin she looks five seconds away from crying any moment.” 

“I think they’re mad at me for not sending a letter sooner, not trying to get home as soon as I could. I think they’re mad at me for joining the air corps. My brothers both have stateside positions, they’re safe, and my parents don’t know why I didn’t do the same thing.” 

Eugene stands and sits beside Babe, who leans his head on his shoulder. “They might never understand. That’s what happens when you go home.” 

Babe breathes out a long breath. “Yeah.” 

They stay for another week. Babe’s brothers come back from their positions at Carlisle. The service flag in the window is taken down, and Eugene isn’t sure what happens to it. By the end of the week, Babe had spoken more about what happened and apologized for not writing sooner. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better. 

Granted, nobody is happy when they announce that they’re taking a train to New Orleans. Nobody more so than Bill, who gets into a huge argument with Babe the day they leave. 

“He just deals with things differently,” Babe says after they take their spot on a train heading south. “He don’t know what to think of us even though he says he knew all along. I think he knows I ain’t gonna be back in Philly for a long time, and I think he blames you for that.” 

Eugene looks away. He was nearly grateful to watch the skyline of Philadelphia disappear behind the crest of a hill. The whole week Eugene had felt as if he was walking on eggshells, and Babe’s family couldn’t help but look at him like he was a ghost. The city seemed to be cramming closer and closer into itself, pressing them in. 

“Gene, don’t blame yourself. I’m going because I want to.” 

“A life with me means you’re giving up a chance at normalcy. You could go back, find a girl, and have a kid, eat dinner with your family on Sundays, get a stable job.” He whispers, careful to keep his voice low. “I don’t want to keep you from that.” 

Babe looks over his shoulder but none of the other passengers are looking at them. At 5 am on a Sunday, the train is next to empty. “That kind of life ain’t gonna make me happy.” 

“One with me will be a life of hiding, of secrecy. The world ain’t nice to folks like us.” 

“I know that, Gene! And I’ll take it anyway because I can’t imagine a future without you. The only thing that got me up in the morning in Austria was knowing that you were out there, that I’d see you again. I wanna go home with you, meet your Grandmere and cousin and see your godawful swamp.” Babe squeezes his hand when he finishes and Eugene squeezes back. 

Maybe he was choosing the harder path, but that was all he knew how to do. A life without Babe would be far more difficult than one with him. He loved him more than he feared the world. 

It takes a day and a half to reach Bayou Chene. Eugene didn’t have time to tell his Grandmere to meet them in New Orleans, so he took the back way into the little town, down a road pockmarked with craters and buried beneath swamp water in places. He helps Babe crutch over fallen trees and carries both of their suitcases. The air is muggy with summer heat and humidity, thick with bugs and pollen. Cypress trees rise from the muddy waters of the Mississippi, their roots home to bird nests and fish. 

“I can’t believe you live in a place like this.” Babe pants, wiping a hand over his forehead as they stop to take a break, about a mile from Eugene’s house. “When you said you lived in a swamp I thought you meant like a mile from a swamp, not smack dab in the middle of it.” 

Eugene sits on the fallen log beside him and smiles. Perhaps he suspected that home would look different, he hadn’t been back since he’d ran away, but the swamp never changed. The mosquitos were the same, the heat thicker than a blanket was the same, the dirt road still the same. A frog croaks in the distance. 

“I thought coming home would be scarier.” He admits. 

“I thought coming home wouldn’t be scary.” Babe snaps a stick in half and draws mindless doodles in the mud. “But seeing everyone, telling them what happened,” he shakes his head, “I never wanna do that again.” 

Eugene wraps an arm over his shoulders and pulls him in. Babe sighs. 

“It’s so peaceful here.” 

Eugene nods. “It’s quiet.” 

“Yeah. It reminds me of you. I think you make a bit more sense to me now.” 

Eugene gives him an odd look, but Babe doesn't elaborate so Eugene only shakes his head and collects their suitcases. 

His home is half-hidden under brambles, with moss hanging from the shudders and a worn American flag near the door. Half of the house sits on stilts atop the river, built Baba-Yaga style. If it weren’t for the drying laundry on a line and garden it would have looked abandoned. Eugene smiles sadly. When he ran away, he never thought he would welcome the sight of the old shack or the smell of the swamp. He pictured returning home only on his loneliest nights when the future seemed like a gaping hole. For so long he resented his Grandmere for trying to keep him here. 

“This is quaint,” Babe says. “Is your Grandmere a witch?” 

“Yes.” He points at the garden, “That’s what all those herbs are for.” 

Babe’s face sours, but he follows Eugene up to the door. He knocks on the flimsy cypress door pitted with cracks, and each knock seems to shake the rusted hinges. He doesn't remember the door being so execrable. 

The door is flung open and an ancient woman stares back with sunken eyes. Her face is more lined than Eugene remembers, etched with wrinkles like the bark of a tree. Her back is hunched over a cane, and her wiry hair drawn back in a long braid down her back. Her eyes narrow at Eugene the same way a judge watches the accused. 

“Eugène Gilbert Roe.” Her voice is crackly and hoarse from years of smoking, and it seems to come from a place deeper than her throat. Eugene swallows as she says, “I ain’t think I ever gon’ see you again.” 

The night Eugene left was the same night he’d been beaten by the boys who lived closer in town. The nicest thing they called him was swamp trash. He hadn’t gone to see his Grandmere, hadn’t gone to Merriell either. He packed a bag, brought as much money as he could with him, and took the train to Baton Rouge without looking back. 

“I-” 

He barely gets the word out of his mouth before she grabs him around the shoulders and pulls him towards her with bone-crushing strength. The breath leaves his lungs with a gasp. He drops the suitcases to hug her back. She smells of smoke and old floral perfume, of must and swamp water and nostalgia. 

“I’m sorry for what I did.” He grieves into her shoulder. “I ain’t mean to be gone so long.” 

She pulls back and smiles sadly at him. “You found your way again. Ain’t no reason to go around being sorry.” 

The words wash over him like the tide over a beach, taking with them rocks and shells and all the regret he’d stored up for so long. He wipes at his eyes as she turns towards Babe, taking him all in at once. Eugene isn’t sure what she sees, but Babe holds out his right hand and says, “I’m real pleased to meet you, ma’am.” 

She takes his hand but gives a sideways glance towards Eugene. “After all this, ya brought me home a  _ Yankee _ ?” 

Babe gasps. “A what now?” 

“Don’t worry.” Eugene sniffs, “He’s a good one.” 

She reaches up and ruffles Babe’s hair with a grim smile. “Always knew it’d be a redhead. They carry the sun with them.” 

Babe looks at Eugene who only shrugs. He’s just relieved that his Grandmere likes Babe. He isn’t too sure what he would have done if she didn’t. 

“Now,” she says, patting Babe’s shoulders. “You is too skinny. Let’s get some Étouffée into you.” 

That night they sit on the porch, watching the fireflies flicker over the water, their glow reflected in the murky waves. They lean into one another, and there’s no clear place where one starts and the other begins. 

Eugene had never understood the phrase “loving is easy” until then. Before that, it had always been his heart bare and bleeding, longing for Babe’s return, fearful of his safety. He’d never been good at being known, he had always retreated into the furthest corner before it could occur, but Babe had reached inside and stepped easily over his walls and made a nice little home there. The redheaded pilot with a temper and a reckless streak, a crooked smile, and a determination that took Eugene’s breath from him. Loving Babe was easy. 

They move to New Orleans, close enough to the bayou that Eugene feels at home, but in a large enough city that Babe doesn't feel like a fish out of water. Every so often they visit Nixon and Winters in New Jersey, and they spend Christmas in Philadelphia. Eugene gets a job as a doctor in New Orleans, and Babe becomes a flight instructor although he always walks with a slight limp. 

The war never leaves them, but it becomes a distant scar. Sadness grows further and further away. There is no rush anymore, they have forever. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also I imagine that Babe's scar looks like Zuko's from Avatar the Last Airbender haha
> 
> Thank you to everyone for reading and leaving comments and kudos, it means the world to me. This fic helped me get through quarantine and I'm sad to see it finished, but I am happy with this story and I had a lot of fun writing it. I intend to make more fics for baberoe, but I don't have any concrete ideas of plans yet :)
> 
> Once again tysm for reading :)


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